‘My first boss later became my client’

CEO Duncan Kreeger founded TAB in early 2018.

Duncan Kreeger is CEO and founder of UK-based TAB, a real estate finance and investment platform. TAB has successfully written over £450m in loans within four years and is set to have a loan book of over £700m in 2025.

I have never claimed to be a good employee throughout my career history and have had more of an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. What I have learned is the importance of building good relationships, as you never know when those things will come back to help you in later life.

This came to fruition with my very first boss, who later became a client of mine several years later. It felt like a good win to build those relationships with people who looked like your boss early on in your career and very quickly became peers.

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My first job, in my late teens, was at an estate agency in Clerkenwell called Urban Spaces, which sold loft spaces. My bosses wanted to change the way my salary and package was delivered. Even at a very early age I was pretty put out by that and decided we would part ways, much to the surprise of my employers.

Several years later they said they were really impressed that I had stood my ground. It stuck with them that I had been true to my principles and it wasn’t me changing the goal posts; it wasn’t how I was told to treat clients and therefore it wasn’t how I would be expected to be treated as part of a firm.

They are lessons I have taken with me in building businesses. Now in my forties, I have learned to play the long game more. It’s harder when you are younger to think what the effect of a conversation will be down the line.

TAB saw a need for a lender that understood the requirements of bridging loans.

The world has changed so much since COVID, especially when it came to trying to find ways to build camaraderie with a laptop at home. When we finally moved back into a new office we decided to contribute with the other tenant for a chef to make breakfast and lunch.

We wanted to convince people that coming back to the office was a good idea, despite the considerable cost.

At TAB, we are now opening up real estate to everyone. As well as being a debt provider through my career I also believe there should be a different way of buying or selling property.

Earlier this year we launched a new fractional ownership product, TAB Property, meaning that people can invest in real estate for just £1,000 without needing to borrow money, making property investment possible for more people.

Where we currently sit in the market debt is expensive and in some cases outweighs the cost of any rental income while the bank has a first lean over the asset and effectively has control.

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Real estate is the largest asset class in the world and it’s currently a little bit protected by the rich and famous. Say you want to buy a Travelodge investment — which is an example of one in Essex we have done this year — Travelodge is the tenant, responsible for maintaining it for 18 years and paying us a rent four times a year.

Most investors might see that as a good bet but it will never be attainable for them as it is difficult to predict what the returns will be. What we have done is take the £3m asset and opened it up to investors. There will be no debt and it is owned by the investors on our platform.

TAB has launched its new fractional ownership investment product with the purchase of two Travelodge hotels, including this one in Chigwell, Essex.

We collect the rental income and make sure the building is looked after and pay it to our investors monthly. There are no lawyers, tennants or mortgage lenders to deal with.

A lot of people don’t have the time or expertise to know what property they should be looking at. My view is that you can waste thousands of pounds at the outset doing due diligence, surveys and legal fees. TAB looks at property all of the time and works out which of the properties we want to bring to our users once we have carried out all the due diligence.

Recently I went into a meeting in my boardroom with a gentleman I hadn’t met before. He said he had a message for me as his best friend was my old school tutor, Phil Newman, who had been tracking my career and had been proud of me.

We met up for a coffee a few days later and he remembered how I had wanted to see the outside world and didn’t see obtaining school exams in the way others did.

He saw me as being bold and how I didn’t see value of being in school. In hindsight I had probably been right, he said.