SPEAR’S PARTNER
ASK, and you shall receive
ASK Partners’ experienced founding trio open up property
transactions to discerning HNW investors, empower borrowers, and bring it all together on an innovative fi ntech platform
IN THE WAKE of the pandemic, as the property market fi nds its feet once again and international travel begins to return, opportunities abound. Ambitious developers are on the hunt for capital to fi nance a wide array of real estate projects, both residential and commercial, and ASK Partners is eager to provide it. Styled and spoken aloud as ‘A-S-K’, the name symbolises the union forged by its three founding partners – Daniel Austin, Paul Stevens and Doug King – who each lend an initial. Five years into the partnership, ASK Partners has provided more than £600 million in funding for 70 property transactions, from short-term fi nancing for bridge loans to joint-venture equity. No strangers to the intertwining worlds of
property, banking and corporate fi nance, they’ve amassed streets of complementary experience between them. Stevens built up Investec’s property business from nothing to a loan book of £3.5 billion, and was joined by Austin at the turn of the millennium. King, meanwhile, earned his corporate fi nance stripes at BDO. Austin then founded Capital A, which King joined, before Stevens took up a chairman role. Now, as ASK, they aim to inject the world of property fi nance with a dose of fl exibility, and have so far allowed 250 sophisticated investors to cherry-pick transactions to chip into using a fi ntech platform. ‘All of our investors are little banks in themselves,’ Austin says. ‘We’ve given HNW investors the opportunity to come into something that wasn’t previously available.’
Traditionally, private banks following an
investor-fund model have eschewed personal choice in property investments. Opening out the sector to HNWs, family offi ces and private clients, Austin says ASK fi nds that ‘most people we take on want to have some infl uence as to what they’re investing in’ and want to deploy their ‘own intellectual capital to decide what to do with it’. ASK’s platform houses detailed investor
briefi ngs tailored to each transaction, while investors can keep abreast with updates on a private social-media feed. By allowing members to select their own investments, the fi rm sidesteps pressure to lend prematurely, charge excessive fees or grow assets under management. This, in turn, has created a unique pool of capital, where investors can collectively fi nance a loan and opt for different risk levels with adjusted returns. Every deal is underwritten in-house, with due diligence processes taking four to six weeks after initial terms are agreed. Industry intel and data are used to assess the potential of each individual property proposal, while the property’s title is treated with a fi ne-tooth comb to untangle any loose legal threads. ‘There’s still risk in there, but you can’t get a return without it. We’re not magicians – we just try and mitigate it,’ says King. The fi rm’s skill is borne out by results.
‘We’ve written a total of £800 million of loans and haven’t lost any money yet,’ Austin says. ‘But it’s a lot of hard work – you need to employ the same rigorous process to every transaction.’ ASK’s founders account for fi ve per cent of each deal using their own money.
For developers, Stevens says ASK’s ethos ‘is about being fl exible, and looking at what is the underlying asset, who is the underlying borrower… we’re always looking for how to unearth that, the best deal’. Permitted development rights have added a window of opportunity, while the pandemic has freed up stock as private banks have offl oaded assets. ASK recently funded a project to transform one former department store into a residential-led scheme in Staines, which could pave the way for 250 new homes. ‘We’re looking at how assets can be repositioned,’ says King. ASK is looking to fund a scheme that will eventually build 650 new homes in the Midlands, and another that will create 1,000 new homes in north London. For these, he says there might be ‘more planning hurdles and more stages, but the point is we’ve helped unlock that development’. The founders hope to keep their fi ngers on the pulse of HNW investors’ needs, and are currently responding to a strong demand for lower-risk transactions at around six per cent return. While they will still cater for investors searching for higher, ‘calculated returns’, many want investments that sit between ‘losing money at 1 per cent interest’ and entering the stock market. Flexibility, meanwhile, will underpin
everything. ASK is currently piloting a ‘secondary market’ where investors can swap out of deals early as others step in to fi ll their shoes. It’s something ‘that doesn’t really exist at the moment’, says Austin. You get the sense, however, that this may not be the case for long. Web
askpartners.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
