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Tenn chief executive Matt Watson and managing director Steve O’Brien reflect on the bold approach which has driven the firm’s growth and led to its new product, which is designed specifically for the local market
TO launch a new business in the middle of a global pandemic requires a bold decision, and everyone at Tenn had that courage.
The clear vision and unwavering commitment for Tenn – an international capital finance company – has achieved a spectacular growth story and created a high-calibre enterprise, serving a sophisticated and discerning global client base with complex asset finance requirements.
Tenn has just completed its most successful year to date, lending £200m to high-net-worth individuals around the world in 2024 and covering 19 jurisdictions, reflecting one of the firm’s USPs.
With their global product credentials secured, Tenn chief executive Matt Watson and managing director Steve O’Brien are now getting ready to launch a product solely for the Channel Island market.
“When we founded Tenn, we partnered with Elliott Advisors (UK) Ltd, one of the largest funds in the world,” said Matt. “This was the catalyst for Tenn’s initial growth, springboarding the business on to establish multiple funding lines providing finance for a greater variety of client projects across diversified asset classes.
“We felt that there was a clear requirement in Guernsey and Jersey for a sensible, pragmatic lending solution for borrowers who needed access to significant levels of capital.
“To cater for these clients, who are professional in their outlook and looking for a long-term relationship with their lender, we will suit their requirements, and we will deploy assets across the Channel Islands.”
Tenn’s deep understanding of the Channel Island ecosystem, the team’s network of connections and strategic partnerships, the regulatory environment for fiduciaries and trusts, and the personal and commercial insights into the local appetite for capital finance ensure that the structure and proposition of these tailored products and services meet the market need.
And not only do they meet a need, but Matt said he was confident that the end product would “further cement Tenn’s reputation for relationship-driven lending”.
“The property market across the Channel Islands is very big and to support successful people to deliver their ambitions, you have to understand what you’re doing in this space and be very relationship-focused,” he elaborated. “We have worked here for a long time and have spent a lot of time and effort building those long-term relationships with clients, many of whom work with us time and again as they bring different projects to fruition.”
And while many sectors of the property market may, as Steve acknowledges, have been “fairly static” recently, he says that there is still a good level of demand at the higher end of the spectrum.
“Everything under £3.5m is still fairly static, mainly because mortgages are difficult to secure at the moment, but when you go above that level, the market is still relatively buoyant, both among existing residents and high-net-worth individuals moving to the islands,” he said.
In addition to its new product launch across the Channel Islands, Tenn has enjoyed a further boost, securing the backing of a UK bank.
“We are delighted to have additional institutional support, which, together with our other funds, gives us access to more than £1bn of funding, something which gives the market the confidence to know that if we say we are going to do something, we will do it,” said Matt. “This new backing is also a significant stamp of approval not just for Tenn but also for our vision for the future.”
With a clear conviction that this evolving market demand is under-served, Tenn has developed a flexible product solution that can be tailored to each of its client’s complex global portfolios and structures. Designed through a blend of codified algorithms for crossjurisdictional complexities and delivered by a rich seam of in-house technical capability, Tenn has captivated the market with its twinning of “high-value” and “high-touch” concepts into its service levels. And Tenn’s resolute understanding of the premium levels of engagement expected by Tenn’s high-net-worth global client-base has set the tone for the business.
“One factor behind our success is that we have a significant amount of capital in the group, so we don’t have to raise money,” he said. “That means that if we find a deal we like, and a borrower we like, we deliver a solution. That has enabled us to develop a good reputation for providing a premium service to supercredible borrowers and delivering when they need us to deliver.
“That reputation has been hard-won and achieved by hiring some amazing people to deliver on our aims, which have never changed since day one. When we launched, that service element was always uppermost in our minds, and we always had a clear idea of the type of client we wanted and the market that we wanted to cater for.
“Since then, we haven’t really diversified our offer. We have found our niche and have concentrated on delivering that service really well and giving value to that group of clients.”
That may sound simple but Matt is quick to acknowledge that the business’s progress is underpinned by the irreplicable combination of quality relationship engagement, highly specialist expertise and complex data architecture and analysis.
“We were always confident that our target market was there and was big enough to support our ambitions,” he said. “However, it’s very easy to have an idea. Executing that idea is much harder, and our greatest challenge was building a multijurisdictional business, factoring in the multiple pieces of regulation in each of those jurisdictions, and then attracting the significant institutional funding we needed to support our ambitions.
“Doing that, and communicating our vision to investors and clients, has been an amazing process to go through and I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved. But I also have no doubt, looking at the opportunity that exists in the Channel Islands, the UK and internationally, that there is tremendous potential to expand our business and deliver high-value loan solutions to more clients around the world.
“And I’m confident that we can achieve our growth ambitions without changing our model. We will hit our £300m goal for 2025 in a risk-controlled way, lending in the same way we have always done, expanding our reputation and delivering for more clients, while also continuing to generate healthy returns for our investors.”
