At a glance
- Security, pricing and tenor are not described, and on a facility of this size that is where the open credit questions sit.
- Perch, founded in 2016, buys, collects and manages consumer and commercial debt across the entire lifecycle and carries more than £2.5bn in assets under management.
- Ellis Diamanti, who leads specialty finance at Triple Point, described Perch as a genuine UK growth story built outside London and one of the country's leading credit management platforms on a ten-year track record.
Triple Point has lent £55m to Perch Group, the Blackpool-based debt purchaser, as part of a £400m funding package reported by Alternative Credit Investor on 7 October. The commitment joins a lender group that already includes NatWest Group, Hampshire Trust Bank, Shawbrook Bank, Paragon Bank and Lloyds, with Quilam Capital still an investor in the business. Security, pricing and tenor are not described, and on a facility of this size that is where the open credit questions sit.
Perch, founded in 2016, buys, collects and manages consumer and commercial debt across the entire lifecycle and carries more than £2.5bn in assets under management. A debt purchaser's balance sheet is in effect a receivables book, so diligence runs through portfolio purchase criteria, servicing performance and recovery assumptions, with leverage on EBITDA telling a lender very little.
Ellis Diamanti, who leads specialty finance at Triple Point, described Perch as a genuine UK growth story built outside London and one of the country's leading credit management platforms on a ten-year track record. He said the lender expects to work with the team on its long-term objectives. The syndicate mixes clearing banks with non-bank lenders rather than a single unitranche underwriter, which puts Triple Point's £55m inside a package shared with five banks.
The syndicate behind the £400m
| Party | Role |
|---|---|
| Triple Point | Lent £55m as part of the £400m package |
| NatWest Group, Hampshire Trust Bank, Shawbrook Bank, Paragon Bank, Lloyds | Members of the lending group |
| Quilam Capital | Remains an investor in the business |
| Fieldfisher | Advised Perch Group |
| Hunton Andrews Kurth | Advised Triple Point |
| Ashurst Perkins Coie | Advised the senior lending syndicate |
Related coverage lists other Triple Point specialty finance commitments: a facility for the UK bridging lender Red Kite, up to £50m for Plend and extended funding for Faes & Co's US bridge lender. A book of purchased consumer and commercial debt behaves more like an asset pool than a corporate credit, even where the structure on a given deal is not public, and asset-backed finance is where the size is going.
Our own reporting on MSP Capital's £350m line made the point that a large facility leaves one constraint: finding enough loans to draw it. Perch's version of that constraint runs through the supply of debt portfolios, which the report does not quantify, and the coverage does not say how much of the £400m has been drawn.
Whether the £55m is new money or a refinancing of existing commitments remains open, as does whether Quilam's position shifts as the lender group widens. Six institutions now sit behind a Blackpool credit manager holding £2.5bn of assets, five of them banks, and the pricing on that composite facility is the number the report leaves out.
A debt purchaser's balance sheet is in effect a receivables book, so diligence runs through portfolio purchase criteria, servicing performance and recovery assumptions, with leverage on EBITDA telling a lender very little.
Reported by the Direct Lending desk from Alternative Credit Investor. Published . Corrections