Onside Issue 6 - 40

Seneca
Bridging
Q&A
With Head of Operations, Sharon Catterall.
With 30 years' banking and finance experience,
from heading commercial banking as
Associate Director at Royal Bank of Scotland's
Preston office, to specialising in mezzanine
finance at Flourish Capital, Sharon Catterall
joined Seneca in autumn '17 to serve as Seneca
Bridging's Head of Operations.
Keen to find out more about her experience,
Onside met with Sharon, to uncover what
makes a good development and how she
intends to spearhead the business into a new
era of success and innovation.

Q: How do you use your experience
to influence the Seneca Bridging
operation?
A: My speciality is development finance, so once
I took up my role, I reviewed, consulted on and
changed Seneca's proposition and put in place a
much stronger development finance product and
created additional offerings such as stretched
senior and joint venture debt funding solutions.

I've streamlined the customer journey from start
to finish - there's a new underwriting guideline
and a process and procedures manual which sets
out exactly what we do each step along the way to
closing a deal. This way, once a deal comes in - our
clients and staff know exactly where they stand.

Q: How does a good development
stand out from the many
opportunities that cross your desk?
A: It starts with the Developer. Do they have
experience? Have they got the costings right?
Are they surrounding themselves with the right
development team? Obviously, we have to ask
questions. We'll do an online search and sift through
their website to check their previous developments,
and if this is all satisfactory and within our lending
criteria, we then move to the next stage.
My most memorable deal was with a developer
that was building a new store in Blackpool for a
high-profile supermarket chain. The mainstream
bank couldn't move quickly enough - it would
have taken them three months, but my team and
I took just three weeks to obtain credit sanction,



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Onside Issue 6

Contents
Onside Issue 6 - Cover1
Onside Issue 6 - Cover2
Onside Issue 6 - Contents
Onside Issue 6 - 4
Onside Issue 6 - 5
Onside Issue 6 - 6
Onside Issue 6 - 7
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Onside Issue 6 - Cover3
Onside Issue 6 - Cover4
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