Enness Mayfair HQ
What was your inspiration behind starting Enness Global?
A lot of my motivation was purely personal: I wanted financial independence, control over my own destiny and the freedom to build and create something of my own.
Before Hugh Wade-Jones and I founded Enness, we worked at a great company, learning a lot. However, we outgrew it quickly – I like to be challenged, and I like to solve problems for other people, and I felt I wasn’t doing that enough. From a professional perspective, I wanted to have a role that would grow with me and keep me busy and engaged without having to change jobs every few years. In many ways, setting up Enness was the natural progression of that thought process, and fourteen years later, here we are!
How does Enness Global differ from other mortgage advice brokers?
We are different in three ways.
Firstly, we don’t sell a product. We work with the client and their advisers to solve a problem or react to an opportunity using the whole range of finance products available. In essence, this means we do everything from luxury asset finance to bridging loans to property development finance or other debt or loan structures.
Secondly, Enness is neither limited to only brokering mortgages nor brokering mortgages in a specific country. Our clients have global assets and interests, and therefore take a global view to debt where our competitors either can’t or won’t.
Lastly, we don’t say no. Sometimes we can’t offer our clients exactly what they thought they needed when they approached us. However, instead of simply stopping there, we will find the next best solution, or we’ll tell our clients what needs to change for them to get the outcome they want.
What is a typical profile of a client?
Enness works with clients from all over the world. Our clients come from all walks of life, but they tend to be both active and entrepreneurial. By that, I mean they are ambitious, they want to do things, to build, to achieve goals and to develop personal projects and ventures.
Which countries do you operate most in outside of the UK?
France is our second most popular country for debt. It’s a country that has global appeal, a property market for everyone and it is hugely desirable. However, it’s complicated to arrange a mortgage in France, especially as a non-resident, so our service is even more valuable.
What has been your biggest challenge since founding the company?
Finding the right people. We have an exceptional team at Enness, and everyone adds value, has their place and contributes to the team, but that hasn’t happened overnight. We have learned that finding and keeping the right people is absolutely vital. What we do is often time-sensitive, complex and highly specialist. Having the right people with the right mindset to cope with that is essential.
Would you be able to disclose what on aggregate has been your typical loan size?
Our average loan request in the last year was £2.7m ($3.5m) across nearly 4500 enquiries. That encompasses some very big loans and some more modest ones, too.
What is the most unique asset class that you have agreed to loan against?
We arranged finance against a collection of very rare Cognac in 2019. It was a special vintage that had been in a family’s possession for a very long time. However, they wanted to start selling a portion of it and wanted a trade facility to help with distributions.
That was a pretty rare deal. About 90% of our activity is centred around real estate, but we have arranged loans against art, cars, boats, gold, watches and jewellery.
Do you see trends in certain global hotspots in terms of demand, and has COVID-19 impacted that?
Ibiza is one of the most desirable places on earth for UHNW investors, and in hindsight, it dealt with the pandemic very well. The UK countryside has also performed magnificently as people escaped the city in search of space.
What is Enness Global’s USP in such a competitive market?
I’d say it’s our people. Enness’ team is very, very good. They’re able to identify opportunities in a unique way and translate that into solutions or outcomes for our clients, whatever the odds. Few of our competitors can do the same, especially considering our global footprint and our service spread.
Our marketing and brand are also hugely important to us. We spend a lot of time ensuring we are getting the right things in front of the right people and that what we produce is focused on our prospects and their needs rather than pure self-promotion.
When you are not working, what do you enjoy doing during your time off?
I have two children and one more on the way, so I spend a lot of time at princess birthday parties. If I’m not doing that, I’m either taking my kids to the party or collecting them, and with the new baby coming very soon, that will be my life for quite a while!
As a family, we like to travel and be together on weekends and holidays: we have a work hard, relax hard approach to life.
If you could choose a celebrity client, who would it be and why?
Probably Ronaldo – given how much he earns and how active he is “off the field”, I’m sure I’d be able to arrange lots and lots of cheap debt for him all over the world.
From a non-business perspective, probably someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt or David Beckham: I would love to see how they see life.
