'We are all in on making it easy to do business with VWR Capital'

This article was created in partnership with VWR Capital.

VWR Capital is committed to three pillars: exceptional service, investor returns, and staying ahead of market trends. Recent and imminent innovations reflect that dedication and position the company well for future growth — and of course, its partnership with brokers is critical to the overall mission.

“We want to align commitments on both sides: what are your business needs, what are our business needs, let’s match them up and establish or grow the relationship,” said Steven Lang (pictured), national sales manager at VWR Capital. “We can be that partner that helps brokers get where they need to go for themselves and for their clients. We are ‘all in’ on making it easy to do business with VWR Capital.”

Grappling with atypical market behaviour

The market’s well-documented ups and downs have brought many changes and challenges, as well as some atypical behaviour. For example, history dictates that when there’s a rate decrease, there’s a home sales increase, but that didn’t happen with the last drop. This has sparked some caution, Lang noted, as the seasonality of the real estate appears to have shifted this year. VWR Capital mitigates some of the uncertainty due to its laser-focused niche in the real estate market.

“We deal in your cookie-cutter residential homes in urban areas, and the markets with the biggest swings in values are sometimes those that stretch outside of that definition or we lend at a lower loan to value to ensure our strong portfolio is not impacted by these swings in market valuations currently,” Lang explained. “There’s more than enough of this type of business to go around and ensuring brokers know what we are good at, when to come to us, and when something won’t fit is important.”

To help with that, VWR Capital’s business development managers are set up to facilitate success. They have “every piece of knowledge that the underwriters have,” Lang noted, adding that this is a differentiator for eliminating long turnaround times by assisting in structuring new deals that fit within the clients’ goals and the company’s guidelines. Whether it’s an experienced broker or someone new who needs to be walked through the process to eliminate surprises or delays, the VWR Capital team is here to help. Reach out, give them the address, and let’s see what we can do, he urged.

“You’re able to get an answer quicker by bringing it to a BDM, or to me, who can help structure it better and get it through faster — especially in a market like this where a ‘yes’ two years ago might not be a ‘yes’ today,” he said.

At the end of the day, broker success and VWR Capital’s success are inextricably linked. The company knew to get to the next level, maintain the stability and strength of its portfolio, and continue to grow investor return, it had to keep up with its broker partners. With a view to working more closely together, VWR Capital walked the walk and is making changes.

What’s new at VWR Capital?

Top-of-mind for brokers is speed, so streamlining became a main priority at VWR Capital. As a small, efficient team, some recent changes freed up capacity to handle more volume, which helps tremendously with what could only be described as a sluggish turnaround time — something VWR Capital was keen to improve.

“Our upgrades got us on the right path to where we need to be,” Lang said. “We already win a lot of deals because of our longevity and reputation in the market, backed up by the funds we have to lend, but our speed was that one missing piece.”

On top of the strength of the BDM team, the company also rolled out a “broker package” to give brokers an idea of what it’s looking for. In this broker-facing documentation, appraisal requirements are outlined so the broker knows upfront if the report they have or are about to order is or will be in line with those guidelines rather than finding out just prior to funding, for example.

VWR Capital has also redone processes internally, hired more staff, and for the past couple of years have been working on bringing the changes together through an updated system for the sales and underwriting team. The first part of that new system just launched internally, taking the company from what was useful technology but dated to more adaptable and less administrative through automation.

“As we grew, we needed more organization and streamlined processes,” Lang said, adding that a welcome surprise will be VWR Capital’s brand-new commitment letter which was brought up to industry standard and is now clearer and more concise.

Another simple but important change was the addition of automated responses, which the company kept hearing was something brokers wanted. It lets them know their deal is submitted, received and has triggered the system, which provides peace of mind. Broker feedback has been an important guiding force during this redevelopment phase and will continue to be asked for and considered going forward.

When speaking to raising the bar on service standards, Lang noted “there are a lot of ups and downs during change, but we are committed to our vision.”

“We want to stand in front of investors and tell them we made sound decisions on our lending, and we want to stand beside brokers and know we’re aligned in our relationship and end-goals,” he said. “Stick with us, trust us, and we will be in touch when we have more improvements we can stand behind consistently.”