In a first for Australia’s commercial property finance sector, Stamford Capital has launched comr8 – an innovative finance marketplace where borrowers can find the best interest rate and get funded.
The online comr8 platform is free for users and is the first to provide an analysis and comparison of the entire commercial property lending market comprising banks, non-banks, and private lenders. Comr8 provides an immediate estimate of the best market rate and the ability to start the borrowing process.
The innovative new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) fintech delivers borrowers the best interest rate available based on a sophisticated calculation, with the back-end supported by raw data from Stamford Capital’s 10 years’ specialist experience arranging commercial property finance with over $1 billion of loan volume settled annually and a current pipeline value of over $3.5 billion.
Borrowers need to answer a short series of questions regarding the type of loan and the parameters around their needs to feed into comr8’s calculation.
According to Stamford Capital, comr8 was created in direct response to the increasing complexity and opaqueness of the commercial property finance market: the revolving door of new lenders and the on-going competition between bank, non-bank, and private lenders.
“We built comr8 to empower the borrower and deliver enhanced transparency. Until now, only a handful of brokerages with sufficient reach and national scale had true visibility over the interest rates on offer. Now, borrowers can instantly assess their rate to ensure it’s competitive,” said Michael Hynes, Joint Managing Director of Stamford Capital.
Hynes explained that lenders names are not disclosed via comr8 due to the complexity of commercial finance.
“It’s not as simple as picking the lender with the best rate, there are a range of other factors we consider before advising our clients. What we’ve achieved with comr8 is distilling our data and experience into a series of formulae that allow a borrower to quickly check what a leading, national broker is seeing,” Hynes said.
“The timing is perfect for this platform. While the residential lending market is saturated with consumer-oriented comparison tools – similar technologies for commercial property finance have lagged behind, particularly ones that consider the entire lending market,” he said.
“We believe we have the richest dataset in the market, and we’re happy for borrowers to access this for free as they search for funding.”
Interestingly, in the last financial year Stamford Capital reported almost 40% of its deals were transacted with banks, reflecting banks increasing participation in the commercial property market and continued appetite for deals.
This trend highlights that unless borrowers are considering the complete lender market, they run the risk of paying too much interest.
According to Incapsica, the developers who built comr8, the main criteria driving comr8’s design is speed and usability, with the need for a borrower to easily input information and receive an instant rate estimate.
“We went with a minimal design and execution, allowing the user to focus on each question at hand. Meanwhile, we needed a backend that did the hard work: calculating each answer into the equation, but also allowing for formulations to be adjusted based on industry trends and fluctuations.
“Another consideration was mobile. We wanted comr8 to be responsive and easily accessible – in the pockets of borrowers everywhere,” said Baz Brown, Director at Incapsica.
The comr8 marketplace is set to appeal to a diverse range of commercial borrowers seeking to ensure they are accessing competitive rates. All types of commercial property loans are covered, including construction, investment, land bank and residual stock.
“Regardless of what stage borrowers are at in the lending process – whether it’s a quick sanity check on an existing rate or they are curious to find the best interest rate available – comr8 delivers peace of mind and greater bargaining power,” Hynes said.
“It brings lenders and borrowers one step closer together, but this time, on a level playing field.”
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