Natalie Elphicke, Head of Structured Housing Finance at Stephenson Harwood, was a finalist in the 'Legal Innovator of the Year' and for 'Legal Innovation in Finance Law' categories in the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Awards 2011.

This year, the judges were looking for 'bold thinking', asking for entries to the awards which highlighted how individual lawyers and firms had extended their role to advise businesses at the very highest levels.

Entries to both categories centered on the Gentoo Genie, a product devised for housing client Gentoo, which assists those struggling to get on the housing ladder by allowing them to buy a home without the need for a deposit, without mortgage finance and in a way that is lifestyle-flexible. It was Natalie and her team's work on this model which the judges noted "has the potential to revolutionise the mortgage-finance market."

The judges added: "Natalie Elphicke specialises in social and affordable housing in the UK and has worked on a number of firsts in the sector. Her work with the Gentoo housing group to develop an affordable home-ownership scheme was one of the most original ideas featured in this year’s FT Innovative Lawyers finance category.

Ms Elphicke drew on Stephenson Harwood’s Islamic finance expertise to make the product work under English law. By unpicking sharia-compliant lease-style structures, she adapted their risk-sharing, flexible and no-penalty characteristics to the conventional housing market.

This was a highly unusual way to approach Islamic financial law, as it was usual practice to use sharia to mimic western financial structures, with the aim of attracting Islamic sources of financing.

Ms Elphicke’s lateral thinking and creative ideas were crucial to the development of the “Gentoo Genie”, a form of housing tenure that allows people to part-rent and part-buy their homes without a mortgage.

The scheme was pioneered in north-east England, where it was heavily oversubscribed, and properties have been identified to roll it out nationally over the next year. At a time when many people face insurmountable ¬difficulties in securing mortgage finance, the wider social impact of this work is palpable.

Some of the other firsts Ms Elphicke has worked on include the creation of the affordable housing perpetual reinvestment foundation to provide low-cost home ownership and to capture proceeds for reinvestment in the local community."