A contract won to service a large NPL portfolio in commercial real estate requiring top to bottom recruitment of department.

Our client, a consumer loan servicing and advisory business based outside of London had secured a contract to service a billion-pound commercial real estate portfolio, servicing non-performing SME loans. They needed to set up a department from scratch which included the recruitment of a Managing Director, Directors, Assistant Directors and a team of Portfolio Managers, all with specialist SME Commercial Loan servicing experience dealing with non-performing loans.

Due to most candidates with this skillset being predominantly based in the City/Central London we had a challenge to source candidates who would be open to working outside of London. We tackled this challenge by researching all CRE Loan Servicing Businesses, approached candidates who lived within a reasonable commuting distance of our clients office, presented the opportunity to join a newly created department and the opportunities and scope to progress.

Our consultants had very specific criteria in terms of experience to source and to enable us to drill down to finding experienced professionals, we carried out detailed competency-based interviews, benchmarking candidates suitability.

We provided management information to our client advising on the volume of candidates we had approached, the number of candidates that were not interested, and their reasons why. We carried out a benchmarking exercise on salaries paid in the sector based on our own market research to ensure that we attracted the right calibre of individual and that the salary package would be competitive.

We successfully recruited a Managing Director, a Director, 2 Assistant Director’s, and several Portfolios Managers to service the portfolio.

Our client then managed to secure two additional portfolios to service and we have been servicing their ongoing requirements since.