FEATURE
Vision – GB Bank co-founder and CEO Stephen Lancaster says the Tees Valley is a fantastic region that ’ s only going to improve .
RIGHT HERE , RIGHT NOW
Stephen Lancaster , co-founder and chief executive officer at Middlesbrough-based GB Bank , looks at why Tees Valley is at the heart of a property finance revolution
“ Why Middlesbrough ?” That ’ s a question we ’ ve been asked several times since we opened as a fully licensed bank last August – although , I hasten to add , not by anyone from the Tees Valley .
It ’ s a question for which there is a flippant answer – “ Why not ?” – as well as a much more considered response .
There is no doubt Middlesbrough is as good a place as any from which to start a new venture , whether that ’ s in property , industry or , in our case , financial services .
And there is also real merit in championing places that can still be slighted in certain quarters in this country . Yet in our view , there are compelling reasons why Middlesbrough is not just as good a place as any for us to base GB Bank – it ’ s better .
Born of frustration Like many businesses , GB Bank was born partly out of frustration .
What was frustrating for my fellow cofounders and I was seeing communities – particularly in underserved areas of the country – missing out on potentially transformational developments .
As we have seen all too often , this can have knock-on effects on everything from economic confidence and job creation to attracting regional investment .
Why were they missing out ? It wasn ’ t for lack of ideas or unwillingness to get things done .
Instead , what we were seeing was that forward-thinking projects being put forward by SME property developers and investors were not getting off the ground .
They were finding themselves excluded from a lot of traditional , high-street bank finance due to rigid criteria , while the nonbank specialist lenders tended to offer a limited number of financial products that didn ’ t always suit the project in hand .
The existing property finance ecosystem was simply not built for certain types of development , the majority of which were in areas of the country where development was needed most .
In such cases , developers were seeing their projects fail to make it off the page and communities in need of properties were missing out , particularly when it came to housing , of which there is nowhere near enough in this country .
Opportunity knocks This was immensely frustrating for all concerned , particularly when you look at
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