Bridging finance leads for commercial brokers

Loanleaf bridging finance leads are exclusive enquiries from UK limited companies and LLPs that want funding to buy, build or refurbish their own premises, or to refinance existing debt, often on urgent timelines. They come from trading businesses with at least 6 months of history and £50,000 or more in annual revenue, not from property developers or individuals. Each lead is sold to one broker only and costs £15 to £250 in credits, priced by how fundable it looks.

What these leads are, and what they are not

Before anything else, it is worth being clear about who is behind each enquiry. Every Loanleaf lead is a trading UK limited company or LLP. Sole traders, ordinary partnerships and businesses that are not yet trading are turned away on the form before they can submit.

That means Loanleaf is not a source of residential bridging, auction finance or heavy development deal flow. You will not find property developers raising money for a ground-up scheme, portfolio landlords, or individuals buying at auction. If those cases are the core of your book, other channels will serve you better.

What you will find is a different, and often overlooked, group: established trading businesses that need property finance for their own operations. A manufacturer buying the unit it already rents. A hospitality business refurbishing its premises. A company that needs to move quickly on a building before a longer term facility can be arranged. For brokers who handle commercial bridging for trading businesses, these are worth a closer look.

Where the bridging opportunities sit in the lead flow

Loanleaf does not run a separate bridging form. Business owners complete a single enquiry form and choose a purpose from a fixed list. The opportunities most relevant to a bridging desk come from a few specific combinations of answers.

• Commercial property (buy, build or refurbish). The business wants funding for premises it will use. Some will suit a commercial mortgage; others need speed or a short term solution first.
• Urgent timelines. Owners who select As soon as possible or Within 2 weeks are telling you that time matters. Combined with a property purpose, that is the clearest signal of a bridging need.
• Refinance existing debt. Some refinance cases involve property already held, or a facility that needs replacing quickly, which can open a bridging conversation.
• Larger loan sizes. Owners choose an amount from £5,000 to £2m+. Bridging cases tend to sit at the upper end, and you can filter for that.

Not every commercial property enquiry is a bridge, and some will be better placed as a term loan or commercial mortgage. If you also write term property finance, our page on commercial mortgage leads covers that side of the same flow.

What each lead tells you, and what it does not

Each lead arrives with the answers the owner gave on the form, plus contact and consent details. Before you buy, you see a summary of every live lead on Loanleaf Platform, so you can judge fit without paying first.

• Loan amount, purpose and how soon the funds are needed
• Company structure (Ltd or LLP), annual revenue band and time trading band
• Missed payments, defaults or CCJs in the last 6 years (No, Yes or Not sure)
• Existing finance, with amount left to repay and monthly repayments bands
• A quality score from 0 to 100 based on credit history, time trading, revenue, urgency and existing debt
• Name, business name, UK mobile and email, plus source page, timestamp and the consent record

There are important gaps for bridging work, and you should know them before buying. The form does not ask for property value or loan to value, the property address, whether the property is residential or a commercial investment, planning status, build costs or exit strategy. It also does not ask for sector, director names or bank statements.

In practice, the lead tells you that a fundable trading business wants property money and how quickly. Everything that determines whether a bridge works, from security to exit, has to be established on your first call.

Setting criteria for bridging finance leads

On Loanleaf Platform you can buy leads one at a time in manual mode, or switch on auto-buy so matching leads are bought the moment they arrive. For a bridging desk, the criteria you set do most of the work of filtering out cases you would not place.

A sensible starting set-up for commercial bridging leads might look like this:

• Purposes: Commercial property and Refinance existing debt
• Loan size range: set a floor that reflects the smallest bridge you would write
• Revenue bands and time trading: lean towards more established businesses if your lenders prefer them
• Clean credit only: switch this on if adverse history rules out most of your panel
• Limits: leads per day, credits per day, credits per month and a maximum credits per lead

Auto-buy criteria cover loan size, revenue, purpose, time trading and credit history. Timeline is visible in each lead summary rather than set as an auto-buy rule, so if urgency matters most to you, manual mode with email alerts lets you pick the As soon as possible and Within 2 weeks cases by hand.

If several brokers match the same lead, a fair rotation decides who gets it. Leads above your per-lead maximum are left for manual buying, and you receive an email alert so you can decide whether a larger case is worth the extra credits.

Qualifying on the first call: exit, security and timescales

Because the form stops at business fundamentals, the first call is where a lead becomes a bridging case or not. A short, structured conversation usually tells you within minutes whether to proceed.

• The property. What is it, where is it, and will the business occupy it? Confirm it is commercial and not residential or a pure investment.
• Value and loan to value. Ask for a realistic value or purchase price and work out the loan to value from the amount they asked for.
• Security. Will the property be first charge security, and is there any other property or asset available?
• Exit. How will the bridge be repaid: a commercial mortgage, a sale, a refinance once works complete, or business cash flow? A credible exit is the heart of the case.
• Timescales. What is the real deadline, and what happens if it is missed? An urgent timeline on the form needs a specific date behind it.
• Works and planning. For refurbishment, ask about the scope of works, costs and whether any planning consent is needed or in place.

The answers on the form still help here. Revenue band, time trading and existing finance tell you whether a term exit is plausible, and the credit history answer tells you which lenders to think about before you discuss rates.

If a case turns out to be unsecured working capital or asset finance rather than a bridge, it may still be worth writing. Our page on commercial finance leads covers those purposes in more detail.

How pricing works for larger, urgent cases

Leads are bought with credits, where 1 credit is £1 of lead value. Each lead costs £15 to £250 in credits, set by a scoring model that looks at loan size, revenue, time trading, credit history and affordability, meaning whether the amount asked for is realistic for the business's revenue.

A sensible ask from an established business costs more, and a long shot costs the minimum. Some examples from the live model:

• £250k loan, £1m to £5m revenue, 5+ years trading: 165 credits
• £1m loan, £1m to £5m revenue, 2 to 5 years trading: 205 credits
• £100k loan, £250k to £500k revenue, 2 to 5 years trading: 95 credits
• £5m ask from a 6 to 12 month old business with £100k to £250k revenue: 15 credits

For bridging finance leads, this matters in two ways. Larger, well supported property cases sit towards the top of the range, so they are priced as the more valuable leads they are. And speculative requests that look out of proportion to the business are cheap, so you are not paying a premium for cases that rarely complete.

Plans are monthly and exclude VAT: Starter £2,000 (2,000 credits), Growth £3,500 (3,850 credits), Scale £5,000 (5,750 credits), and Custom from £6,000 in £1,000 steps with a 15% bonus. New partners can start with a first month of 1,000 credits for £1,000 + VAT, then move to Starter. Unused credits roll over while you stay subscribed.

Exclusivity, delivery and working the lead

Each lead is sold to one broker only. Once you buy it, it disappears for everyone else and is never resold. For urgent property cases, that removes the race against other brokers calling the same owner.

Bought leads are delivered instantly on the platform, by email, and to your CRM by webhook in JSON, which works with Zapier, Make, HubSpot, Pipedrive and any CRM that accepts webhooks. Speed matters for owners who said they need funds within two weeks, so a fast first call is the simplest way to make these leads work.

The platform includes a simple pipeline (New, Contacted, Application, Funded, Lost) with notes and CSV export, which is enough to track cases that need several conversations before a term sheet.

Refunds are available within 72 hours of purchase only if the phone number is not in service or belongs to someone else, or the email address does not exist. Unsuitable property, an unworkable exit or a change of mind are not grounds for a refund, which is why the first call matters.

Is Loanleaf a fit for your bridging desk?

Loanleaf bridging finance leads tend to suit brokers who already arrange commercial bridging and short term property finance for trading businesses, and who are comfortable qualifying security and exit themselves. It suits firms that also write commercial mortgages or business loans, because not every property enquiry will end up as a bridge.

It is less suited to brokers who want residential bridging, auction purchases, regulated cases or development finance leads from professional developers. The form does not capture planning status or build costs, and the businesses behind each lead are trading companies rather than development vehicles. If you mainly want development finance leads, treat Loanleaf as a supplementary source at most.

You are responsible for your own regulatory position, including FCA authorisation where your activities require it. Because every lead is a limited company or LLP, the flow stays focused on commercial lending.

Where the leads come from

Every lead is a business owner who completed the enquiry form on the Loanleaf website after finding it through search, content or paid online advertising, including Meta. There is no bought-in data, no scraped lists and no cold contacts.

Before submitting, the owner ticks two separate boxes: one accepting the terms and privacy policy and confirming that Loanleaf is an introducer, not a lender or broker, and one consenting to their details being shared with a matched broker who may contact them by phone, email or text about business finance. The exact wording and timestamp are supplied with the lead.

The form also checks that the mobile is a valid UK number and that the email domain can receive email. Repeat enquiries from the same phone or email within 90 days are not sold again. You can read more about how the programme works on the partners page.