The new wave of dev finance sourcing
Broka launched in mid-2025 as a commercial loan sourcing platform with an impressive lender panel of 243 specialist lenders and 1,000+ financial products. Assesr takes a different approach — rather than just sourcing lenders, it generates the credit paper that wins their approval.
What Broka does well
Broka has built the largest specialist lender panel in the market:
- 243 lenders, 1,000 products — the broadest panel in private real estate finance, covering bridging, development, mezzanine, and equity
- Niche asset class coverage — petrol stations, caravan parks, and other non-standard assets that other platforms miss
- 30,000+ combinations searched in seconds — sophisticated criteria matching across LTV, LTGDV, LTPP, LTC, and more
- Case management — combines sourcing with business management tools, not just search
- NACFB partnership — strong industry credibility and broker network access
- White-label downloads — brokers can share lender options with clients under their own brand
Where Broka falls short
Despite the impressive lender panel, Broka has significant limitations:
- Broker-only — borrowers and developers have zero access. Every deal must go through a broker.
- No credit paper generation — Broka finds the lenders, but brokers still write the credit paper manually. This is often the most time-consuming part of the process.
- Hidden pricing — no public pricing page. You must request a demo and go through a sales process to learn what it costs.
- No document extraction — all data entry is manual. Brokers must type in every figure from planning consents, QS reports, and valuations.
- New and unproven — launched mid-2025, still building track record and case studies.
- Criteria matching only — tells you which lenders match, but doesn't analyse the deal itself. No risk grading, no sensitivity analysis, no sourced figures.
What Assesr does differently
Where Broka stops at "here are lenders that might take this deal," Assesr starts at "here's an institutional-grade analysis of why lenders should fund it":
- AI credit paper generation — a 10-section institutional-grade credit paper generated in 60 seconds from uploaded documents
- Document extraction — AI reads planning consents, QS reports, title deeds, valuations, and sponsor CVs. No manual data entry.
- Risk grading and sensitivity analysis — every deal is graded A–E with stress-tested scenarios (GDV drops, cost overruns, time delays)
- Direct borrower access — developers submit for free. No broker needed.
- Transparent pricing — 0.5% on drawdown, published on the website. No sales calls, no hidden fees.
- Standardised lender submissions — every lender receives the same structured format with sourced figures, making review faster and comparison easier
Head-to-head comparison
- Lender panel: Broka has 243 lenders across all specialist finance types. Assesr has 50+ specialist development finance lenders. Broka's number is larger but includes bridging, mezzanine, and equity — not all are development finance.
- Credit papers: Assesr generates them automatically. Broka does not.
- Borrower access: Assesr allows direct borrower submission. Broka is broker-only.
- Pricing: Assesr publishes 0.5% on drawdown. Broka's pricing is hidden behind a sales demo.
- Document handling: Assesr extracts data from documents using AI. Broka requires manual entry.
- Speed: Assesr generates credit papers in 60 seconds. Broka matches criteria in seconds — but the credit paper still takes weeks to write manually.
- Case management: Both offer deal/case management capabilities.
- Deal analysis: Assesr provides risk grading, sensitivity analysis, and comparable benchmarking. Broka provides criteria matching only.
The quantity vs quality argument
Broka's headline number — 243 lenders — is impressive. But the real question is: what do those lenders actually receive?
With Broka, a broker finds matching lenders, then manually writes a credit paper and submits it. The quality depends entirely on the broker's skill and experience. With Assesr, every lender receives a standardised 10-section credit paper where every figure is sourced back to the original document.
A mandate-matched credit paper sent to 8 lenders will outperform a raw criteria match sent to 50 — because lenders can actually review and respond to a well-structured submission. Average lender response time on Assesr is 4.2 hours.
Who should use Broka?
- Brokers who handle a wide range of specialist finance (not just development) and want the broadest possible lender panel
- Brokers who work with niche asset classes that other platforms don't cover
- Firms that want combined sourcing and case management in one tool
- Brokers who prefer to write their own credit papers and want criteria-matching to speed up the sourcing step
Who should use Assesr?
- Developers who want to submit directly without a broker — and save on fees
- Anyone focused specifically on development finance (ground-up and heavy refurbishment)
- Lenders who want to receive standardised, pre-analysed deal submissions
The bottom line
Broka is a powerful sourcing tool with the largest specialist lender panel in the market. But sourcing is only half the job. The other half — writing the credit paper that actually gets the deal funded — is where Assesr has no competition.
If you need to search across every specialist lender in the UK, Broka's panel is unmatched. If you need to actually get a deal funded — with an institutional-grade credit paper, matched lenders, and transparent pricing — Assesr is the faster, cheaper, more complete solution.