LendInvest is a UK lender that makes buy-to-let, bridging and development loans to professional property investors, mostly with money from institutional partners rather than its own balance sheet. After a £27m loss in FY24, when it sold loans at a loss and cut a quarter of its payroll, it made a £3.2m profit in FY26 on record lending of £1.44bn. The profit is thin, the shares ended mid-2026 well below their 2025 peak, and management says higher swap rates since the Iran war will slow lending in the near term.
A property lender that mostly invests other people's money
LendInvest has two divisions. LendInvest Mortgages offers buy-to-let and owner-occupied mortgages and short-term loans to landlords and homeowners. LendInvest Capital makes larger, structured loans to property developers and investors. It says its property loans under management date back to 2008, and that it had lent more than £8.57bn since inception by September 2025.
It earns money in two ways. On loans it keeps, it earns interest: £19.7m in FY26. On loans it originates and manages for institutions, it earns fees: £23.7m. Third parties now fund 75% of the £3.82bn of assets on its platform. Funding partners include J.P. Morgan, Castlelake and AB CarVal, plus bank lenders, bond investors and repeated mortgage securitisations (bonds backed by pools of its loans).
Management argues the model scales. Automation and workflow tools let loan volumes rise while headcount stays flat, so extra fees fall through to profit. 15 Jul 2026 8 Dec 2025 14 Oct 2025
The reset: selling loans, cutting staff, shrinking debt
In FY24 the market turned against the company. New lending fell and the balance sheet was heavy with loans that earned thin margins. LendInvest sold about £250m of low-margin buy-to-let loans to Chetwood Financial at a loss of around £10.7m. It pushed to recover problem loans in the Capital division, which raised the impairment charge to £7.1m in the first half. It cut headcount by over 27%.
The result was a £27.3m loss before tax for FY24, against a £14.3m profit a year earlier, and no dividend after 4.5p for FY23. Debt fell by £645m. The company also withdrew an expected £12.1m gain from selling the residual interest in a securitisation in June 2024, citing an accounting adjustment. The shares slipped from about 30p in late 2023 to 25.5p by March 2024. 19 Dec 2023 24 Jul 2024 5 Jan 2024 17 Jun 2024
“However, this has required some difficult decisions that have impacted the results.” 19 Dec 2023
Becoming a fee-earning asset manager
FY25 was the pivot to what management calls a capital-light model: grow lending with other people's money, cut costs, reduce debt. J.P. Morgan upsized its separate account with LendInvest by £500m to £1.5bn. A £300m warehouse facility from BNP Paribas, Barclays and HSBC ran for three years, and Lloyds renewed a £300m facility. Funds under management reached £5.14bn by January 2025.
Net fee income rose to £22.0m and new lending rose 39% to £1.23bn. The full-year loss narrowed to £1.2m, with the second half profitable. That met the pledge to return to profit during FY25, but only at half-year level. Non-executive Chair Christian Faes handed over to Stephan Wilcke in March 2025. The shares rose from 23.5p in December 2024 to 41.5p by July 2025. 9 Dec 2024 10 Sep 2024 21 Oct 2024 27 Jan 2025 3 Mar 2025 21 Jul 2025
“These actions underpin our shift toward a capital-light, asset management-oriented model, which allows us to drive stable, recurring earnings.” 9 Dec 2024
Record lending and a first full-year profit
In FY26 lending hit £1.44bn, up 17%, with a record £415m in the final quarter. LendInvest completed its seventh mortgage securitisation, £310.6m, with AAA senior notes priced at 81 basis points over SONIA. It issued a £75m retail bond at 8.25% due 2030, partly by swapping holders of older 2026 and 2027 notes into it. Castlelake agreed a £250m bridging partnership for loans up to £15m.
Costs fell while income rose. Administrative expenses dropped 1% to £36m, headcount fell to 192 and 51% of office staff now sit in Glasgow. Profit before tax was £3.2m, against a £1.2m loss. The shares did not follow. They slid from 41.5p in July 2025 to 24.5p in June 2026, and the filings give no reason. They recovered to 30p after the results. 28 Oct 2025 12 Nov 2025 26 Jan 2026 23 Apr 2026 15 Jul 2026
What the record shows
The earlier balance-sheet-heavy model cost shareholders. Loan sales at a loss, higher impairments and a withdrawn £12.1m gain turned FY24 into a large loss. The legacy Capital portfolio still carries most of the credit cost: £3.4m of the £4.0m FY26 impairment charge. That book shrank 20% in the year.
Management's profit promises have arrived late but have been met. Profitability was promised for FY25 and delivered in the second half. A full-year profit came a year later. Stage 3 impaired loans fell 30% to £63.1m.
Funding scrutiny has risen across the sector. LendInvest says its largest funder completed an independent check confirming every loan is allocated to one funder only. The FY26 results were delayed a day by auditor quality-control procedures. 19 Dec 2023 17 Jun 2024 21 Jul 2025 15 Jul 2026 14 Jul 2026
Who runs it and who owns it
Rod Lockhart is chief executive. Stephen Shipley became finance chief in 2024 after David Broadbent left, and Hugo Davies, who filled in as interim finance chief, runs the Mortgages division. Stephan Wilcke chairs the board.
Two founders-era holders dominate the register: Chief Investment Officer Ian Thomas holds about 27.8% and director Christian Faes about 26.1%. In December 2025 each sold 375,000 shares at 33p to 34p. Wilcke bought 178,570 shares at about 28p after the FY26 results and non-executive Maeve Byrne bought shares in January 2026. Lockhart was granted 600,000 nil-cost options subject to three-year performance conditions. 24 Jul 2024 3 Mar 2025 17 Dec 2025 18 Dec 2025 28 Jan 2026 16 Jul 2026 31 Jul 2026
Where it stands in mid-2026
Retained loans grew 38% to £943m and interest-bearing liabilities rose 35% to £982m, so the balance sheet is expanding again, though slowly compared with third-party assets. Net assets were £72.5m. Cash was £78.3m, of which £14.2m is unrestricted. In June 2026 it issued a sixth retail bond, £75m at 8% due 2032, and over 70% of bonds maturing in October 2026 had already rolled into the fifth.
The company is simplifying further. It is closing its Self-Select retail investing platform and running down those balances. It is moving loan servicing to an AI-enabled system from Prism, with implementation starting in FY27. 15 Jul 2026
Record quarter, then a rate-driven pause
Management says Q1 FY27 set another origination record and the pipeline is the largest yet. Swap rates have risen since February 2026 and Bank of England rate cuts have stalled, raising funding and lending costs across the market. LendInvest expects lending to dip in Q2 and says FY27 should be in line with analyst consensus. Its medium-term ambition is to double lending. How long the rate pressure lasts is, in its words, uncertain. 15 Jul 2026
“We anticipate a drop in lending in Q2 2027 from the record high in Q1 as a result of higher interest rate swaps post the start of the Iran war.” 15 Jul 2026
Written by AI from LendInvest's own announcements since Oct 2023 · every paragraph links to its sources