Cross River Bank, a technology infrastructure provider that offers embedded financial solutions, announced that its Principal Finance Group closed $825 million of capital commitments in 2023.
The new investments, which “include senior secured credit facilities as well as programmatic asset purchase arrangements, provide specialty finance platforms with additional capital to scale their commercial and consumer financing products.”
Rahul Jha, Head of Principal Finance at Cross River, said:
“The strong growth of our business in 2023 reflects our unwavering commitment to supporting fintech pioneers and accelerating the pace of financial innovation. We plan to deploy even more capital in the year ahead.”
Cross River’s Principal Finance Group is a specialized team “focused on providing credit facilities and forward flow purchase arrangements to empower the growth of Fintech platforms and their investors.”
As noted in another recent update, Cross River Bank, a New Jersey State chartered FDIC-insured bank and Equal Housing Lender known for its diversified commercial real estate (“CRE”) lending program and deep market experience, “finished 2023 with impressive year-over-year (YOY) origination growth across multiple asset classes.”
The Group’s Lender Finance, Construction, and Healthcare teams “achieved 48 percent, 34 percent, and 16 percent YOY growth in originations, respectively. Combined, the team, a division of the newly rebranded Commercial Banking Group, originated $803 million across 68 loans nationwide for various asset classes.”
The Lender Finance division closed out strong “on the year, touting 48 percent YOY growth in originations with $105 million in key originations during the final week of December alone.”
To continue the momentum and support plans “to scale further in 2024, the team added Tim Wolf as the Director of Lender Finance.”
Wolf brings “a wealth of knowledge and experience and will serve an instrumental position helping the team increase loan growth.”
As part of the Construction Lending team’s 34 percent YOY origination growth in 2023, loans were made “to facilitate the development of apartments under NYC’s affordability programs including: the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, the FRESH (Food Retail Expansion to Support Health) initiative, Brownfield development projects, and Community facility spaces, such as charter schools, medical offices, etc.”
The team originates and services construction and bridge loans “for ground-up construction, renovation, land acquisition and partially or fully vacant properties across the tri-state area.”
The Group’s Healthcare Lending team, which “originates and services healthcare financing solutions with a focus on term loans and bridge loans, achieved 16 percent YOY origination growth due to the strength of the existing portfolio and by concentrating on the core product of first mortgage loans to facilities and housing properties.”
This strategy was part of efforts “to focus on facilities in states with strong reimbursement programs.”
Over the last decade, the CRE team at Cross River has “led with a customer-first approach and successfully grown offerings to include commercial real estate, healthcare lending, construction, bridge loan and lender finance platforms.”
Now, as the Commercial Banking Group (CBG), the team is further “expanding to serve a broader audience of borrowers and depositors with more offerings, including banking services for real estate customers, as well as other related clients and partners.”