Roma Finance: You can

You can have it all

Speed and service aren’t mutually exclusive

Charlotte Rutter Head of Communications and Networks Roma Finance

When you submit a case, you want speed and certainty. That’s a given. But what if it’s complex? Perhaps you know the customer’s circumstances are borderline or just fall outside of the lender’s normal criteria, but the case stacks up. That’s where bespoke underwriting comes into play. And that takes time, right? Not necessarily.

Roma Finance is a forward-thinking, short-term finance lender, combining technology and unrivalled expertise to offer brokers and your customers the best of both worlds – smart, efficient processing with a personal touch on complex cases. We call it lending less ordinary.

Enthusiasm and experience

At just 12 years old Roma Finance has the ambition and enthusiasm of any successful, growing business. It was founded by Scott Marshall in 2010 with a couple of desks and one employee. He’d worked at Together as credit and risk director and before that at Ford Campbell. Scott launched the business to provide personal, competitive, and innovative lending to property investors, landlords and developers. And those enduring values remain at the core of the business. Today, Roma is a team of more than 40 who work closely with intermediaries throughout the UK providing a range of finance including bridging, bridge-to-term, development and buy-to-let. Cases are underwritten individually, and we can often help those who sit outside mainstream lending criteria. This includes borrowers with unusual income streams, the self-employed, those with a credit blip and investors looking for funding on non-standard property types.

We work with brokers whose customers have varying degrees of experience, from those starting out on their property journey to very experienced developers.

For Roma it is all about the drive of the borrower; do they have a plan and is it viable?

We don’t believe that bespoke underwriting and technology are mutually exclusive

Sustainable growth

Over its first decade Roma quietly carved out a reputation for excellent personal service and unrivalled property experience. In 2020 we stepped up a gear, boosting distribution, productivity, funding, tech capability, and of course, volumes. The latter has doubled in the last year alone.

A hugely successful rebrand in 2021 put Roma on the map, boosting our profile with brokers as a modern, tech-focused, short-term finance lender renowned for both its service and property expertise. But, to lend with integrity remains central to our vision and we’re extremely proud of our negligible default rates. In fact, none of Roma’s pandemic loans experienced any defaults or arrears.

Getting up to speed

We’ve long been trusted for our ability to take a bespoke view on funding unusual or complex projects – we believe in lending less ordinary and intelligent touch underwriting where the case works.

But we know that brokers need speed and certainty too, so last year we invested heavily into streamlining our processing and underwriting capabilities to shorten application forms, simplify the submission process, and achieve a faster app-to-offer turnaround.

Last September we launched RomaFLOW, a fast new processing channel designed to cut processing timelines for straightforward cases. It has fewer stages, requires less documentation, and uses enhanced technology to help move cases smoothly to offer and completion. It has slashed our processing timescales without sacrificing the personal service and expertise that brokers trust us to provide.

And we’re not finished. We have a technology roadmap for the next two years. We are working with the right partners to make that happen. This will lead to huge improvements for brokers as well as giving our colleagues more time to focus on the complex cases.

We don’t believe that bespoke underwriting and technology are mutually exclusive. In fact, the better our tech, the more personal the service we can provide.

At Roma, we have the confidence in our experienced underwriters to give them genuine autonomy over decision-making. We know they will underwrite the applicant as well as the asset because they understand how to assess risks and mitigate them, and this only comes with experience – there is no substitute.

Best of both worlds

We’ve become faster and easier to work with over the last 12 months, but we still believe in lending less ordinary, and we will always take a view on complex cases.

Roma Finance has transformed over the last year. In 2022, we’re bigger, better and bolder than ever. Brokers now get the same personal service, expertise and experience they’ve always trusted us to give, but now we’re faster, easier to use and have a wider range of product options. You don’t need to sacrifice speed for personal service. You can have it all.