Name and Position: Judith Tan, Head of Capital Markets
What was your previous experience before joining Estateguru?
I was working for myself, advising funds through my consultancy. It was mostly capital raising solutions for funds and project related work. I spent two years at the Co-operative Bank, restructuring their loans and selling a 250M loan portfolio, which was secured by wind farms, to a pension fund. I was also working out and restructuring property backed loans. Additionally, I worked for a tech company in London, while it was working through its A round. They’re basically an online broker for Real Estate in the UK. That’s how I got involved in the tech space and I liked it a lot. The founders had limited experience with Real Estate debt. I advised the company and helped with the loan origination and capital raising. I sat on the board of a UK land fund as well.
Prior to that I was at Investec from 2006 till 2014, through the financial crisis. We ended up buying Kensington mortgages and we did a lot of Real Estate lending and principal investment. Investec had a couple billion of assets under management, across Europe and the UK, and also large scale mortgage portfolios. If you added up our AUM (Assets Under Management), we were managing about five billion across the team. We were also involved in raising capital for individual loan portfolios and for our own originated assets. Before that I was at Nomura, working in Capital Markets, before joining Investec. I also worked at Commerzbank, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley. I was always involved in structured finance and real estate lending. I came to the UK in 2001, which is when I started at Commerzbank where I was involved in large scale Real Estate and structured finance lending. Not small loans. Large complicated transactions and restructuring deals for securitisation.
What is your mission at Estateguru?
My mission is to give institutional investors access to Estateguru loan originated products in varying forms; managed accounts, forward flow agreements, and potentially in the future also securitised structures and bilateral lending deals. In addition to providing access to institutional investors, my mission is also to help Estateguru grow and scale in size. Retail investors will only get the company so far, and in order to reach our target of five billion in originated loans, they will need institutional investment to compliment retail funding.
What makes you the most excited about the potential impact of your capital markets efforts on Estateguru?
I am passionate about helping the company reach its maximum potential in executing its business plan and obtaining the institutional capital necessary to grow the business. I am also keenly interested in fundamentally assisting the business to improve operationally and offer the best possible service to its retail and institutional investors.
Why should institutions like family offices consider Estateguru as part of their investment portfolios?
Family offices should consider Estateguru as part of their investment strategy because property backed loans such as bridging loans offer robust returns circa 11% and will optimise personal investment portfolio returns. Investing with Estateguru loan origination across multiple jurisdictions on a diversified basis is non correlated with equities and can act as a means of investment portfolio diversification. Low leverage on property debt can also sustain deep price declines on the underlying property investment which also act as a means of reducing the downside risk of property exposure.
Name and position: Paavo Põld, Director of Capital Markets
What was your previous experience before joining Estateguru?
Before joining Estateguru I was deeply involved in investment and fund management for over 20 years, with the last 15 years spent in various positions in a cross-border fund management company in charge of a number of Luxembourg domiciled UCITS (Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) and alternative investment funds.
What is your mission at Estateguru?
To design and implement institutional financing strategy which will enable the creation and development of a sustainable financing structure that is efficient and diverse and which will fuel the growth of the Estateguru platform.
What makes you the most excited about the potential impact of your capital markets efforts on Estateguru?
Estateguru is a few steps away from expanding its funding sources beyond the initial retail investors base which has been so loyal and instrumental in helping us to grow to this point. By bringing in institutional capital to invest side by side with our current investors we will open up the path to exponential growth and expedite our graduation into the largest pan-European property backed lender. I am also excited to see how the mission brings together and combines efforts of all our people from loan to risk to IT and data.
Why should institutions like family offices consider Estateguru as part of their investment portfolios?
Family offices should increasingly consider allocations to private debt as the threat of inflation is beginning to command greater attention. In recent studies about two-thirds of family offices indicated that they intend to increase their exposure in the future as the ongoing risk repricing will make private debt, and especially secured real estate debt, very attractive.
Name and position: Martin Murruste, Senior Associate Capital Markets
What was your previous experience before joining Estateguru?
I am a seasoned real estate investment professional with 10 years of experience in transactions, asset/portfolio management and development. Before returning to Tallinn I was working for CBRE Global Investment Partners in the Netherlands, constructing and managing global indirect portfolio strategies for the world’s largest pension funds and insurance companies. In a team with experienced portfolio managers, over €4.0B AuM (assets under management) from four large separate account clients was allocated to over 80 real estate funds globally. My career in Amsterdam started at PATRIZIA Netherlands, working on transactions where I was setting up financial plans and co-ordinating due-diligence processes for large scale acquisitions. Over four years, the company grew from three to almost 20 employees and EUR 1.0B+ assets in all real estate classes were acquired across the country.
I have a Master of Science in Business Economics: Real Estate Finance degree from the University of Amsterdam and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany).
What is your mission at Estateguru?
To service institutional clients with the highest level of quality and responsiveness.
What makes you the most excited about the potential impact of your capital markets efforts on Estateguru?
I’m a true believer in real estate as an asset class that should be accessible to both institutional and retail investors. The sector’s illiquidity and intransparency can only be improved by proptech/ fintech platforms like Estateguru. I would like to help the company to scale up to the moon.
Why should institutions like family offices consider Estateguru as part of their investment portfolios?
Estateguru is a hassle free technology driven one stop shop with local presence in eight countries for accessing real estate debt. Real estate debt is a tool for portfolio managers to provide downside risk protection in an uncertain macro-environment like today.
