Blog · · Luke Rutherford, CEO & Co-founder
Two and a half years on a commercial finance desk, and why I'm rebuilding it from the ground up
What a commercial finance desk taught me about how deals get done, what's broken, and why we're rebuilding it.
I spent two and a half years in a commercial finance brokerage, starting at the bottom and working my way up to lead the desk. I loved the work. I did not love how the work got done.
The typical bridge looked like this:
A borrower calls. You take the details on a notepad, then key them into the CRM. You type the deal into a sourcing platform while you ring three or four lenders you think might take it. Then you type it again into each lender’s own application: a web portal here, a PDF form there, an email to a business development manager. By the time a lender has seen the deal, you or your poor case manager have keyed the same borrower, property and numbers six or seven times. Every copy is a chance to get something wrong.
Then you wait.
A few days later the underwriter has questions. The borrower said their credit was clean, but the lender’s search found a satisfied default from three years ago. Now they want an explanation and the satisfaction letter. Another lender asks the one question you didn’t collect up front, because their criteria weren’t in front of you on the call. By the end of week two, one lender has declined, one has gone quiet, and the borrower is wondering why a loan that was meant to complete in a fortnight still has no decision in principle.
And the borrower was never only talking to you. They’re speaking to several brokers at once, and they go with whoever comes back first. Every day lost to rekeying and chasing is a day someone else gets an answer in. Then the borrower goes quiet on you, because their deal has completed with someone else, and all that work earns you nothing.
Meanwhile the deal is scattered across your inbox, a spreadsheet and a CRM that’s never quite up to date. Nobody has a single record of what went to whom, or why one lender was chosen over another.
None of that is the lender’s fault, or the borrower’s, or the broker’s. Nothing in the process ran the credit check, asked the right questions or collected the right documents before the application went in. The file never landed complete, because nothing was built to make it complete.
The part I’m less comfortable with
I also watched how some lenders got picked. Not always on fit or price. Sometimes on who paid the broker most, or who was easiest to deal with. Most of us didn’t do it, but the system allowed it, and nothing told the borrower it had happened.
Most bridging sits outside FCA regulation. That’s why it moves fast, and why a borrower can end up on the wrong loan without even realising. The whole industry is heading towards regulation. I strongly believe that’s the right direction, and I want Ledgerly out in front, building to that standard now.
What we’re building instead
Every rule in our engine started as something I learned on a live deal. We’ve built proprietary technology, with AI in the deal process, that makes sure our brokers collect everything each lender needs up front, before anything is sent. Each part of it answers something from that story.
- Enter it once. The deal is captured one time. No CRM to retype it into, no sourcing platform, no lender portal. Every application is filled from the same record.
- Live sourcing on the first call. The engine checks the deal against every lender’s criteria as the broker takes the details. Options are on the table before the call ends, before any other broker has called back.
- Everything checked before it goes in. Company records, ownership and charges, the exit, and whatever each lender will ask. Once the borrower picks a decision in principle, and with their consent, we run the credit and identity checks too. Problems surface before an application goes anywhere.
- One complete file, sent once, with the borrower’s consent. Nobody chases.
- One record of the whole deal. What was sent, to whom, when and why. The borrower can see it.
- Lenders chosen on fit and total cost, never on what they pay us. Every recommendation is recorded with its reasons.
- No broker fee. The lender pays us a commission on completion.
AI runs the process and removes the admin. People give the advice, structure the deals and hold the relationships. That’s what AI-native means to us: a small team looking after far more borrowers properly, not a brokerage with no one in it. We’re building the future of commercial finance, one where the broker’s time goes on the client and not the paperwork.
Where we are
We’re finalising our technology now, and our founding panel is open. We’re onboarding lenders and building their criteria and rates into the platform, so we can hit the ground running when borrowers come on. If you lend in bridging, join the founding panel. If you’re a borrower or introducer, get in touch and we’ll keep you posted.
Commercial finance deserves better than notepads and the same deal typed six times. We’re going to prove it one deal at a time.
Luke
Ledgerly is a broker, not a lender. Lenders make all credit decisions. The bridging we arrange is generally not regulated by the FCA.