Singapore’s Global Mortgage Group Raises $18M

Key Takeaways

1. Global Mortgage Group (GMG), a Singapore-headquartered international asset-based lending platform, closed an $18 million cross-border bridge loan in just 8 business days for a prominent Chinese technology founder
2. The deal was structured at a 70% loan-to-value (LTV) ratio with a 12-month bridge loan term, relying exclusively on the real estate asset as collateral – no income verification, no U.S. credit history required
3. The client’s company sale was still pending, making conventional mortgage routes unavailable; GMG’s Shanghai-connected private banking network activated the deal within hours of contact
4. The transaction underlines growing institutional appetite for cross-border, asset-only lending among Asia-based ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals buying luxury U.S. real estate

Quick Recap

Singapore-based Global Mortgage Group (GMG), the parent company of America Mortgages, has officially announced the closing of an$18 million asset-backed bridge loan secured by a luxury residence on Bird Streets, Los Angeles, California.

The transaction was completed in just eight days for a prominent Chinese technology entrepreneur amid the pending sale of his company, making conventional financing routes unavailable. The announcement was flagged by Parsers VC on X (formerly Twitter), spotlighting the deal as a milestone in cross-border ultra-high-net-worth real estate financing.

Deal Architecture: Speed, Structure, and Cross-Border Precision

The $18 million facility was funded at a 70% loan-to-value ratio with a 12-month interest-only bridge loan term, a structure that sidesteps the conventional hoops of income verification, employment documentation, and U.S. credit scoring entirely. Instead, the loan’s underwriting was based purely on the assessed value of the Bird Streets luxury property in Los Angeles, a high-demand micro-neighborhood commanding some of the city’s highest residential price points.

The trigger for urgency was a classic UHNW liquidity gap: the client, a Chinese tech founder whose company was in the final stages of a high-profile sale, needed to move fast on a Los Angeles residential acquisition. His private banker in Shanghai connected directly with GMG, which structured, approved, and funded the transaction within eight days from first contact to wire transfer. GMG CEO Robert Chadwick commented: “Our global funding capabilities combined with in-depth local knowledge allow us to provide quicker, more intelligent, cost-effective, and impactful solutions in the U.S. bridge lending arena.”

This is not GMG’s first sub-10-day closure. The company funded a $38.5 million Singapore Good Class Bungalow (GCB) bridging loan in just 12 days in early 2024, and previously executed a Singapore bridging loan in 72 hours – milestones that helped it cross $400 million in Singapore bridging loans funded in 2023 alone. The Los Angeles deal extends that speed-first playbook to U.S. luxury real estate for the first time at this scale.

GMG was co-founded in 2018 in Singapore by Donald Klip (CEO) and Robert Chadwick, both U.S. nationals who identified a major gap: while foreign nationals and overseas expats purchase nearly $100 billion of U.S. residential real estate annually, only 20% used a mortgage – compared to roughly 98% globally – due to documentation barriers. The firm has since built a network of 300+ direct lenders globally, spanning banks, pension funds, family offices, and private lenders, with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Manila, Bangkok, Seoul, and the U.S.

GMG previously raised a KRW 600 million (~$500K) angel round in March 2020, backed by Mirae Asset Global Investments, SparkLabs Ventures, and Woori Bank of Korea, and has been listed at the Angel and Seed stage on Preqin.

Why This Deal Matters Now: Singapore, Cross-Border Capital, and the UHNW Financing Gap
This transaction lands at an inflection point for Singapore’s fintech and proptech ecosystem. Singapore’s fintech market reached USD 1.02 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to USD 2.72 billion by 2034, at a CAGR of 11.52%. After a sharp 57% funding decline in 2024 – where the average deal value dropped to just $14.8 million – the sector rebounded strongly in H1 2025, attracting close to USD 1.04 billion across 90 deals, an 87% year-on-year increase in deal values.

Within this broader rebound, asset-backed and cross-border lending platforms are finding a structural tailwind. Asia’s UHNW population continues to diversify into U.S. and European real estate, but the conventional mortgage pipeline remains clogged with documentation requirements that do not accommodate overseas income, foreign credit profiles, or compressed deal timelines. GMG’s 8-day execution on a cross-continent deal is a direct answer to that structural failure in the market.

Additionally, Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has been actively expanding its regulatory framework for fintech, including its SGD 100 million (USD 77 million) FSTI 3.0 co-funding program for AI-driven risk models and quantum-safe systems – a policy climate that benefits firms like GMG building tech-enabled lending workflows. Project Nexus, the five-country instant payment corridor connecting Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India, is also expected to go live in 2026, which will compress settlement cycles and open new cross-border capital flow channels.

Competitive Landscape

GMG operates in a niche but increasingly competitive space at the intersection of mortgage technology, cross-border lending, and UHNW private banking services. Its two most directly comparable peers in Southeast Asia are LXA (Singapore, institutional mortgage tech) and Redbrick Mortgage Advisory (Singapore, independent mortgage advisory).

Strategic read

GMG’s edge is execution speed and product breadth for the UHNW and foreign national segment – a niche where neither LXA nor Redbrick competes directly. LXA holds the advantage in building institutional infrastructure for Asia’s residential mortgage market at scale, targeting a larger addressable market but with a longer monetization runway. GMG, by contrast, wins on deals where conventional banks simply cannot move fast enough for high-net-worth clients in time-sensitive situations.

Bayelsa Watch’s Takeaway

I have tracked Singapore’s fintech and proptech funding scene for a while now, and I have to say – this GMG deal is more interesting than the headline number suggests. At first glance, $18M looks like a routine transaction. But when I dig into the details, what I see is a company that has essentially built a private, cross-continent lending machine that operates at a speed most institutional lenders cannot match, even with multiples of GMG’s resources.

In my experience covering cross-border finance, the hardest problem is not capital – it is certainty and timing. A deal that closes in 8 days across two continents, with no U.S. credit file, during an active corporate M&A exit, is not a fluke. It is a repeatable process. That is the real moat GMG is building, and I think it is a big deal precisely because it is hard to replicate.