Proud to see Chris Ragland of Greenbelt Capital and his strong team at Noble Capital featured in the July issue of the American Association of Private Lenders.
Private Lender by AAPL conducted a round-table interview with the partners at Noble Capital: Jadon Newman, Romney Navarro and Chris Ragland. Newman founded the company in 2002 to create alternative investment opportunities that provide shelter from the volatility associated with other investment models. Navarro and Ragland joined the firm as partners later. The growth that ensued led to three divisions: private lending, retirement and real estate.
The three partners have built the company on four core values: growth, stewardship, candor and expertise.
Among the trends they are seeing are Wall Street’s entrance into private lending and the rise of various lending platforms. In this excerpt from the interview, the three partners discuss what these developments mean for smaller private lenders and the U.S. economy.
What trends are you seeing within the private lending industry?
Romney Navarro: Wall Street has entered our space. That’s the biggest trend. So now that institutional capital is here, we’re competing against those guys and it’s great—they’re welcome. There’s more money flooding the space, which is good. It brings a little bit of a spotlight to it.
Chris Ragland: Yeah, I think Wall Street entering is the biggest, latest thing in our industry, and for me, it’s a validator. I mean, thank you for coming in and validating the product that we have from an investor standpoint. I can’t wait to go back to Main Street and raise more money now. Thanks for the headlines. I used your ad or your headline in the Wall Street Journal to show my investors that what we’re doing has just been validated. A lot of it is going to be very disruptive, but I think it can be positive at all levels. It’s going to help the ecosystem of private lending become stronger.
Some of the weaker players are not going to be able to compete with that—that’s very true. If you don’t have a platform that’s scalable, if you don’t have proper asset management to back you up when things go wrong, if you haven’t thought through proper servicing of your paper, if you don’t have that infrastructure, you are at a disadvantage. But otherwise, it’s helping legitimize our space.