Scottish Widows is partnering with Lloyds Bank’s commercial real estate team to offer long-term lending facilities to the UK commercial real estate sector.
The partnership will provide lending to established property investment companies to support acquisitions and refinancing facilities for industrial, retail and office ventures.
Scottish Widows will be able to originate loans of over seven years, secured on well-let investment properties. Transactions will be weighted towards institutions with long-term investment priorities.
This will be the first time that Scottish Widows will provide direct lending to the commercial real estate sector. The move is part of the firm’s wider plan of investing in long-term UK commercial property and infrastructure projects to fund liabilities on its pensions book.
Gavin Stewart, Scottish Widows’ investment propositions director, said: “Given Lloyd Banking Group’s unique position as both a bank and insurer we can provide affordable finance over the short- and long-term and investments of this nature are particularly attractive to Scottish Widows as they will help fund our pension liabilities.
