Shawbrook Bank has increased the size of its network of Strategic Partners for commercial lending to 27 firms.

After five months running the programme, Brightstar Financial has joined.

The scheme was launched September 2012 with 18 commercial mortgage brokers. The 27 Strategic Partners now in the programme receive exclusive process and marketing help, as well as higher commission rates, due to what Shawbrook sees as the quality of cases provided.

The bank claims this is reflective of the lower processing cost of their applications and allows them to provide support to other introducers with their Shawbrook cases.

Karen Bennett, head of sales and marketing, commercial mortgages at Shawbrook Bank, said: “The Strategic Partner programme was developed to acknowledge and reward the brokers who work the most efficiently, in terms of quantity and more importantly quality of applications.

“The programme has been a great success and it’s great to see the network increase as more brokers achieve the published benchmarks. The expertise and market outlook that brokers provide is essential to Shawbrook and we have no limits on the number of Strategic Partners.”

Rob Jupp, CEO at Brightstar Financial, said: “We are absolutely delighted to be made a Strategic Partner of Shawbrook Bank. To us, it is confirmation of Shawbrook being a main partner of ours for short-term lending.

“They offer market leading rates and are committed to delivering in the short term market so for us to be part of the programme is excellent.

“As the geographically closest Strategic Partner, only 250 metres away, we will be seeing even more of Shawbrook since joining the programme. The entire team are a pleasure to work with and we look forward to dealing with them more in the future.”