Filed under: Business Advice,Business Finance,General,Small business,Small Business News — Alan @ 11:02 am
Small businesses in the UK will get a helping hand from the acquisition of Singers Asset Finance by a relatively new lending institution, Shawbrook Bank, which completed the transaction on 22 March.
Shawbrook was created in 2011 as a specialist savings and lending bank committed to increasing the volume of loans made to small and medium businesses.
Chaired by former RBS head Sir George Matthewson, Shawbrook joins the small but hopefully growing ranks of UK banks such as Aldermore and Metro Bank, launched since the beginning of the credit crisis whose stated aim is to make it easier for ‘young’ businesses to get a solid foothold in an economy just now emerging from recession.
These new enterprises offer options that they hope will challenge the country’s lending giants, banks the government has repeatedly taken to task for their hesitancy in loaning money to SMEs. Owen Woodley, Shawbrook’s chief executive, is confident that the merger with Singer will give his company the means to increase its client base and lending capacity, and to provide more timely service than the big banks have been seen to offer.
Woodley told Reuters news agency that the deal would add £350 million to its loan book, bringing it up to around £500 million, and he expects that figure to reach £700 million by the end of 2012, with a combined client base of at least 25,000.
Shawbrook, Woodley added, will be opting out of George Osborne’s new credit easing plan meant to make it easier for SMEs to borrow money from the big banks. He feels the scheme will not be advantageous to banks like Shawbrook that raise most of their funds from retail deposits as opposed to wholesale financial markets.
Singer and Shawbrook respectively are oriented towards financial solutions for small business, and combining their resources and expertise should benefit both of them, as well as their growing clientele.
Filed under: Business Finance — Alan @ 9:55 am
A specialist lender that is backed by the RBS and known as Shawbrook Bank have started offering small business loans north of the border, just a few weeks after launching their service down south. The company aims to provide mortgages up to a maximum of £2.5m to businesses that are owner occupied, as well as property investors. They are already dealing with private customers within Scotland.
A spokesman for the bank has said that they know that there are many SME’s in Scotland that are credit worthy, but they are still facing significant barriers when they try to secure financing. It is crucial now more than ever that these businesses have easy access to the funds they need in order to grow and expand their business.
Rather than using a network of branches, Shawbrook is using brokers to distribute its products, and was formed as an off shoot if the Whiteway Laidlaw Bank in Manchester in affiliation with Link Loans and using Commercial First’s lending platform. The new company is chaired by the former chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir George Matthewson.
One of the brokers offering Shawbrooks products in Scotland is Business Financial, and their director Justin Marsh says that the flexible terms they offer filled a real gap in the market.
Filed under: Business Finance — Alan @ 8:27 am
Shawbrook is a new British bank which is just launched on Monday. It is a bank that is set to target small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those that are struggling to get funding from some of the U.K.’s bigger banks.
Since the credit crisis began, there have been several new banks emerging including Metro bank and Aldomore. These are intended to challenge the big lenders in the UK which include RBS, Lloyds, HSBC, and Barclays. The government has recently been urging larger financial institutions to lend to small businesses so they can hire more staff and improve the unemployment situation in the UK. However, these banks are facing criticism because they are still not loaning enough.
Owen Woodley is the Chief Executive of Shawbrook and he has commented about the situation that, “Small and medium-sized enterprises are not being well served in the industry, we are hoping to improve the situation by offering loan opportunities to them that they have been refused at larger institutions.” The new bank is being partially financed by RBS but Mr Woodley has defended this fact saying that it would be an independent bank. He said “the vast majority of the money that we use to stop this bank was independent of RBS.”
Mr Woodley has also said that it intends to make £250 million worth of loans available to small businesses next year. He also said, “There is a definite demand here because companies are approaching larger banks and being turned down, there is no question in my mind that we will find a market for these loans that we are offering. The demand is there.”
