Ashley Ilsen

Magnet Capital targets team expansion after securing funding partnership



Magnet Capital hopes to expand its team by Q3 2019 on both the sales and operations sides of the business.


The development finance lender recently announced that it had secured the Richardson family as a funding partner.

The family – which will take equity ownership in the business – has a variety of international business interests, predominantly in real estate.

Ashley Ilsen, CEO and co-founder of Magnet Capital (pictured above), said that this put the lender in a strong and highly liquid balance sheet position.

Speaking to Development Finance Today, Ashley spoke about the lender’s targets for its first year of trading.

“Providing that the housing market in the UK stays strong and we continue to lend sensibly, there’s no reason we can’t achieve excellent growth.

“We have modelled to expand the team by Q3 2019 on both the sales and operations sides.

“I hasten to add that this is just a projection and we are currently well ahead of our projected curve at this early stage.

“The team here at Magnet Capital [has] all worked closely together before and we know our processes and what to look out for.

“Anyone that we add would also need to be a development finance expert and fit our very distinct model of how we operate and fund development projects.”

Ashley added that he didn’t necessarily see Magnet Capital as a new market entrant and said it was leveraging off pre-existing relationships with its broker and direct client bases.

“If we were a brand new market entrant, it would be very difficult to enter a very compact market space, but we have a significant amount of expertise and development finance knowledge that sets us apart from other lenders.

“We don’t do any other types of lending.

“We are marketing ourselves as a development finance partner, as we truly believe we are adding value to both our brokers and our clients with our unique offering.

“The sign of a good lender isn’t when things are going well, but when things go wrong.

“Unfortunately, not all development finance projects go as planned and it is in this instance that a development finance lender shows their true colours.”



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