Hampshire Trust Bank
The year 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the Hampshire Trust Bank, which has made Asset Finance, Property Finance and Commercial Mortgages its focus, while also offering competitive Savings accounts to businesses and individuals. It also entered the bridging market last year
Hampshire Trust Bank was founded in Fareham, Hampshire in 1977 and, in May 2014, was acquired by a new management team with the backing of Alchemy Special Opportunities Fund II LP.
Following its acquisition, the bank immediately told the world that, while it was a "new" bank adapted for a tighter regulated age with more demanding service standards, it still retained its finest "old" bank traditions of relationship banking.
It is now considered a specialist challenger bank, concentrating on the financing of commercial customers. In its first full year of trading after acquisition it made its first profit, with assets increasing by more than 400 percent to £243million - from £57million at the end of 2014.
Customers have come to expect the bank's specialist teams to invest time in understanding their specific objectives, drawing on years of experience to offer the finance they need to achieve their ambitions.
Colin Bell, the Hampshire Trust Bank commercial mortgages managing director, has long been a believer that the Buy-To-Let market is set to continue to increase in importance for two reasons.
The first is the increasing difficulty people are having in buying properties because of rising prices.
The second, which Bell emphasises, is due to a significant change in the attitudes of people, particularly the economically important 20 to 30 year olds, who are increasingly renting as much as possible- whether it's the cars they drive, the movies they watch, the clothing they wear or the properties they live in, or where they house their businesses.
The ethos at Hampshire Trust Bank is that the three things introducers and customers want are product, service and certainty . As a result these three values are built into all that Hampshire Trust Bank offers, whether it is bridging, commercial or Buy-To-Let.
