Specialist lender Black & White Bridging is celebrating turning 10 years old this month.

Formerly known as Bath & West Finance, the business has since grown from a small team of five to 17 staff members located across the country, while remaining headquartered in a rural location between Bath and Bristol.

Under the supervision of head of lending, Oli Bland, Black & White has accelerated its growth over the last two years, originating £40m over 80 loans in the last two years alone, which makes up almost 50% of the total lending of the company to date before that.

Funds received by borrowers have been used for commercial and residential purchases, helping businesses to own premises or to improve properties for sale. Many clients have completed numerous projects with the lender, with the conversion of enquiries to issued terms and drawdowns being “extremely high”, it claims.

Martyn Smith, managing director, said: “We are pleased to be celebrating our 10 year anniversary and it is a testament to all the hard work and efforts of our fantastic team to get us to this point. Our ethos of finding a way to make deals work, not saying ‘no’ but saying ‘how,’ has helped us to achieve record levels of lending over the last few years.

“We are now in a strong position to generate more enquiries whilst still retaining the quality and speed of our service through our loyal network of intermediaries. We have always been truly transparent, we say what our maximum rate is and we say what we can and cannot do. No grey areas.

“We consider ourselves the architects and market leaders for transparency and our results reflect that, we look forward to increasing our lending levels and continuing to provide our best-in-class service over the coming years.”