OakNorth increases RAW Mortgage Fund facility to £40m

OakNorth Bank has increased an existing facility with RAW Mortgage Fund from £20m to £40m.

RAW Mortgage Fund is a specialist fund providing buy-to-let (BTL) property loans against residential real estate in the UK.

Founded in May 2015, the fund is run by RAW Capital Partners, the Guernsey-based asset management company.

The fund has completed more than 350 loans since launch at an average loan-to-valuation (LTV) ratio of only 47%.

It achieved a net return for institutional investors of 4.43% in 2020, and will use the facility from OakNorth Bank to lend ahead of investor subscription and retain headroom for potential redemptions.

Tim Parkes, managing director and lead fund manager at RAW Mortgage Fund, said: “Throughout 2019 and 2020, we made several key hires, including a head of distribution, head of operations and a CFO – considerably increasing the size and experience of our senior team.

"In addition to this, we’ve continued to invest in process automation, adding new functionality that’s helped us maintain our speed and efficiency as we’ve scaled.

"We will continue to scale our team and processes in line with the envisaged growth of the fund and are grateful for OakNorth Bank’s continued support.

"Since we completed the initial part of this transaction together, Mo and the team have done several funds finance deals, so their depth and breadth of expertise in this space continues to grow.”

Mohith Sondhi, senior director, debt finance at OakNorth, added: “The fund had strong loan book performance throughout 2020, and has a strong pipeline for 2021, despite the ongoing challenges being presented by COVID-19.

"Having provided the fund with the initial £20m facility two years ago, we saw this as an opportunity to increase our support as the fund pursues ambitious growth plans with regards to its assets under management.”