Enra Specialist Finance completes first securitisation with £268m portfolio

19 October 2020

UK mortgage lender Enra Specialist Finance has announced today, Monday 19th October, that it has priced its first residential mortgage backed securities, backed by a portfolio of buy-to-let and second charge mortgages. The transaction comprises a £267.8m portfolio split between second-charge mortgages and first charge buy-to-let mortgages, originated under Enra’s lending brand West One Loans.

For its initial securitisation, called Elstree Funding No.1, Enra garnered substantial demand from pre-placement orders ahead of publicly launching the deal. As Enra intends to come to market every year as a programmatic issuer, the business also held back around £50m of bonds for public sale. The deal was launched and priced within a week with strong demand for bonds at all levels.

Enra's lending business West One has around £1bn of assets under management. Originally a bridging lender, West One entered the second charge market in 2017 and launched buy-to-let products in 2019. Having delivered steady growth in its new product lines to date, Enra anticipates further growth facilitating programmatic residential mortgage backed securities issuance in the future. The firm services all of its assets in-house and also act as a specialist mortgage distributor under the Vantage Finance and Enterprise Finance brands.

Emily Gestetner, Enra CFO, said: “I am delighted to have priced Enra’s first securitisation. In a matter of weeks we have planned and executed a great transaction in challenging market conditions given the backdrop of the pandemic and Brexit. Whilst we are relatively recent entrants to the second charge and buy-to-let markets, our heritage as a specialist lender goes back many years, and I believe the fact we have been trading for over a decade as a prudent, well-capitalised and profitable lending business was key to attracting such strong demand for our first residential mortgage backed securities deal.”