The strong personal relationships we’ve built with clients over our decades of lending are at the heart of our business. We believe in good, old-fashioned banking — no call centres or automated responses — with a trusted team of experts at the end of the phone. Here we meet some familiar and less familiar faces, who help ensure Commercial Acceptances longevity and success.
This meet our team blog is from Lending Manager Jack Diggins, who talks to us about his charity contributions, time at CA and his dream travel destinaton!
I joined CA in 2015, in my current role as a Lending Manager I work with a small team who help manage my portfolio. I cover every aspect of lending from origination, underwriting, and understanding the technical side of bridging finance.
The Lending Manager position at CA is quite unique within the bridging and development finance industry, as we are less departmentalised than other lenders. We can provide unmatched service to our clients as we are always up to date with their cases. When a client calls me with a complex or technical issue, they know that they are speaking to someone who can find a remedy.
I can think of many rewarding moments since joining CA in 2015 but there will always be a lot of satisfaction when you manage to complete a deal within a very time-sensitive deadline. The nature of the bridging industry dictates that there will often be circumstances where a client has been let down by an investor or another lender but has already exchanged on the purchase of a property. A good lender will be able to deliver the service within the required timeframe whilst also understanding the individual risks posed by each deal.
One memory from the Grad scheme stands out. As part of the Close Brothers Corporate Social Responsibility programme, we were split into teams of 5 Graduates , and we were tasked with raising as much money as possible in 24 hours for Cancer Research UK.
The other groups focused on individual contributions; however, given my early exposure to clients/solicitors/valuers, I realised that corporate sponsors would yield a much greater collective donation. This led to me purchasing a Christmas Tree (it was December after all) and asking 15 of our professional partners to sponsor a bauble on the tree in return for having their company logo printed on it. Our team collectively raised £10,000 within 24 hours which was a phenomenal achievement considering the runners up only raised £1,500.
Having just returned from honeymoon earlier this year it is quite hard to top the Maldives as a destination, but I would love to travel to South Africa one day and experience everything from safari to the vineyards and diving with great white sharks.
I learnt to speak French in school but quickly forgot most of it by the time I was 21. I would love to speak fluent French one day.
The technical side of lending is a skill in its own, but I have also been given the platform to develop my public speaking over the years. I think it’s fair to say that most people have an aversion to public speaking, including myself, but we were always encouraged to do presentations from the very start of the Grad Scheme. Practice makes perfect as they say.
