Hartford Business Journal

20 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | MAY 5, 2025 Colebrook Financial partners (from left to right) include: Founder Bill Ryczek, Harry Heller, Mark Raunikar, Melinda Miramant and Tom Petrisko. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO AT A GLANCE Colebrook Financial Industry: Timeshare lending Top Executive: Bill Ryczek, Founder & Principal HQ: 100 Riverview Center, Middletown Gross Assets: $150 million Website: colebrookfinancial.com Contact: 860-344-9396 Unique Niche This Middletown company finances the timeshare industry; sector consolidation poses a major challenge Two other Colebrook partners — Mark Raunikar and Tom Petrisko — also formerly worked in Liberty Bank's timeshare department. Colebrook has five partners in an office at 100 Riverview Center in Middletown. It usually has about 15 active customers and provides about $90 million in financing per year. Colebrook's main business is receivables lending for timeshare projects, which makes up about 80% of the company's loans. Such loans are made to timeshare property developers who sell time- share units to buyers on a credit basis. The developer accumulates a portfolio of notes receivable, which it pledges to Colebrook as collateral for a loan. The monthly collections from the receivables are forwarded to Cole- brook and used to pay the loan. The developer uses the financing to cover its product, sales and marketing costs and other business expenses. Ryczek said the other 20% of Colebrook's loans are given to hotel brands that buy timeshare properties, timeshare homeowner associations and vacation clubs. Colebrook has also started offering loans to small, independent time- share developers in Mexico and the Caribbean to offset a shrinking number of U.S. customers. "I look down there because there are a lot of independent developers in Mexico," Ryczek said. "Brands By Michael Juliano mjuliano@hartfordbusiness.com C olebrook Financial, a Middle- town-based lender to the time- share industry, is witnessing a consolidation trend in the sector as hotel brands buy timeshare proper- ties from aging owners. In March, Colebrook provided a three-year, $5.8 million loan to the South Carolina-based La Tour Hotels and Resorts to allow its owners to convert the 31-unit timeshare prop- erty into a resort hotel. "When this industry started back in the late '70s, the idea was that you own this (timeshare) forever," said Bill Ryczek, a principal and founder of Colebrook Financial. "But when you get into your 80s and you can't travel and your kids don't want it, forever isn't a good thing anymore. Now it's a bad thing because you're paying maintenance fees forever, and people just want out." Timeshare owners have grown to prefer to own properties for 10 or 20 years, instead of passing them down to their kids, he said. That's creating opportunities for hotel brands — such as Marriott, Hilton and Wyndham — to buy these smaller timeshare resorts and turn them into hotels and/or incorporate them into larger timeshare deals. The trend is creating a challenge for Colebrook Financial, which primarily lends to independent timeshare properties. "We lose our customers when they get acquired," Ryczek said, adding large hotel brands typically get financing through securitization on Wall Street, not from small lenders such as Colebrook. "Here comes Hilton and there goes our customer." Diversification play Ryczek, who grew up in Middle- town, founded Colebrook Financial in 2003, after spending 15 years at Liberty Bank, which has long had a big presence in the timeshare lending space. Ryczek started working at Liberty as a vice president and timeshare manager before moving his way up to executive vice president and chief lending officer. The Penn State University MBA grad began his banking career in 1979 at Barclays American Business Credit, where he became one of the first bankers in the U.S. to specialize in timeshare lending.

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