A client with £20m in private company shares needed $7.5m in liquidity without selling equity or pledging property. We structured a five-year, 50% LTV private share loan by finding a lender who underwrites the business itself, not the brand, demonstrating how specialised expertise unlocks liquidity in a narrow, often inaccessible market.

A client approached us last month with £20m in private company shares. He needed $7.5m in liquid capital. He wouldn't pledge property or sell down his equity, and the company he owned wasn't a household-name fintech darling. Most brokers would have stopped returning his calls after the second conversation.

We closed the deal at 50% LTV over 5 years.

The reason this is worth writing about isn't that we're clever. It's because the private share lending market is broken in a very specific way, and most people with illiquid equity have no idea why their loan applications go nowhere.

Here's what happens. A lender says they do securities-backed lending. Their marketing mentions private equity. You call them. They ask which company. You tell them. Then comes the pause, followed by: "We'd need to see if that falls within our acceptable universe of names." What they mean is: we only lend against five specific companies, and yours isn't one of them.

The universe of private share lenders is absurdly narrow. Lenders want late-stage fintech unicorns backed by Sequoia or Index, ideally ones they read about in the Financial Times. They want Revolut, Monzo at a push, maybe Checkout.com if the wind's blowing the right way. Anything outside that tiny circle gets a polite decline, regardless of the company's fundamentals or IPO trajectory.

This creates a bizarre situation in which founders and early shareholders in genuinely valuable, cash-generative businesses can't access liquidity, while someone holding shares in a loss-making payments company that happens to be fashionable gets a quote within 48 hours. The credit decision isn't being driven by business quality. It's being driven by brand recognition and the credit committee's comfort with names they recognise.

The deal we structured worked because we found a lender willing to underwrite the company itself. Not the logo. Not the backers. The actual business, its revenue trajectory, and the realistic path to IPO. That lender exists. There are perhaps three others in the world who operate this way. Finding them requires knowing who they are, which deals they've actually done (not which deals their marketing says they'll consider), and how to position a business they haven't heard of in a way that makes credit sense.

The other failure point is structure. Most borrowers assume private share lending works like bridging finance or residential mortgages. It doesn't. You're asking a lender to take illiquid, non-income-producing equity as sole security, often with lock-up provisions and transfer restrictions. The pricing reflects that. The covenants reflect that. The term and repayment structure reflect that. If you go in expecting 2 per cent over base on a two-year interest-only term, you'll be disappointed.

In this case, the five-year term was deliberate. It gave the company time to IPO without forced refinancing pressure. The 50 per cent LTV was higher than most lenders would offer on private shares, but the credit work justified it. The facility included structured exit provisions in the event the shares were sold or listed early. None of that happens by accident. It happens because someone has done 40 of these deals before and knows which terms matter and which don't.

What most borrowers also miss: this isn't advice. We don't tell you whether to pledge your shares or whether your company will IPO successfully. That's not our role, and we're not regulated to give that guidance. We find lenders, structure terms, and execute the documentation. If you need strategic advice on your equity or cap table, hire a corporate finance advisor. If you need someone to get a debt facility against that equity over the line, that's what we do.

The market for pre-IPO lending is growing, but it's not getting easier. Lenders are more cautious post-2022, when half the fintech darlings they underwrote saw their valuations collapse. The appetite exists, but the underwriting has become stricter and the structures more conservative. That's not necessarily bad. It just means you need someone who knows which lenders are still actively deploying capital and what credit story they'll actually believe.

If you're holding significant private equity and need liquidity without selling down, the answer probably exists. But you won't find it on a comparison website, nor will you get it from a high street bank. You need a broker who's closed these deals before and knows where the market actually is right now.