For two years, Adam Chinn, former chief operating officer at Sotheby’s, has been quietly building the boutique art lending firm, International Art Finance with funding and support from members of the Nahmad family. In a recent interview with ARTnews, Chinn revealed that firm has now disbursed nearly $400 million in loans and it is on track to reach $500 million before the end of 2025.
Chinn is the latest art industry veteran to take a stab at art loans. Last fall, half a dozen similarly sized art lenders told ARTnews that business was booming despite high interest rates.
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IAF claims an edge over competitors in scale and speed: Chinn said loans can be disbursed in 10 days and its typical loan-to-value ratio is around 50 percent, though he says they’ve gone higher in cases involving exceptional collateral. The firm offers short-term loans—usually six to twelve months—designed to bridge liquidity needs around sales, estate planning, or business operations.
The firm’s average loan size is around $8 million, with a few deals exceeding $40 million. Clients range from blue-chip collectors to artist estates and mid-sized galleries. Chinn said the split between private collectors and trade clients is roughly even.
But IAF’s real differentiator may be its funding source—the billionaire Nahmad family, prolific collectors and dealers of ultra blue-chip art.
The Nahmads are not only backing the firm but also conducting valuations on the artworks internally—a fact that has drawn some scrutiny, given their deep involvement in the market. Still, Chinn insists IAF operates as a separate entity: “Separate legal entities, separate processes,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on in their other business.” Additionally, Chinn said IAF had recently secured a credit facility with a major European bank, increasing the firm’s lending power.
Asked whether IAF’s in-house connection to the Nahmad family might present a conflict in the case of a loan default, Chinn responded: “As a creditor we owe a duty of good faith and fair dealing to the borrower. As a result, we have so far taken works to auction when there has been an issue with payment.”
IAF’s loans are non-recourse, meaning the artwork itself—not the borrower’s balance sheet—is the collateral. The firm conducts standard Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks, but does not evaluate a client’s broader financial standing. “If it turns out you’re not a sanctioned individual and the artwork checks out, we’ll lend,” said Chinn.
In the firm’s press release, Joe Nahmad positioned IAF as a natural extension of the family’s decades-long role in building collections for top clients. “International Art Finance is the final piece of the puzzle,” he said, describing the platform as one that supports collectors, dealers, and estates “at every stage of the collecting journey.”
IAF did announce on Tuesday that it has secured an additional $125 million in financing from a unspecified but “leading” European bank.
It’s clear that the Nahmads’ involvement has helped the firm scale up quickly. By contrast, it has taken Fine Art Group—a longtime player in the field—nine years to disburse roughly $400 million in loans. However, Philip Hoffman, FAG’s founder, told ARTnews that it expects to reach the $1 billion mark within three years. He added that his firm is funded by a pool of investors, whereas IAF is “linked to one family who can pull [funding] at any time,”
“We’re neutral,” he added. “We don’t have conflicts. We sell through whoever will do the best job for the client.”
Other players in the art finance space include Sotheby’s Financial Services, which since its launch in 1988 has originated more than $10 billion in loans across 70 categories, including fine art, automobiles, jewelry, whisky, and wine. In April, the auction house announced a $700 million securitization deal known as the Sotheby’s ArtFi Master Trust, aimed at scaling its lending operations. Major financial institutions such as Bank of America also offer art-backed loans, though terms vary widely depending on the borrower’s overall profile and broader banking relationship.
Like many art lenders, Chinn sees the sector as one primed for growth. Such lending has become a more prominent part of the financialization of the market, with institutions and individuals increasingly treating art less as a sacred object and more as an asset—often a highly illiquid one.
“There’s over a trillion dollars in art in private hands, and only a sliver of that is leveraged,” Chinn said. “People borrow against houses every day. Why not art?”
