Arranging lease finance or asset finance is still increasingly difficult to obtain. The market for prime lending has changed considerably over the last eighteen months as the high street lenders are still taking a precautionary approach to lending. Before the credit crunch and the recession most of the high street banks had an asset finance division in addition to the core commercial banking. As the banks started to suffer losses and the availability of cash to the bank themselves began to dry up these asset finance divisions started to wind down these operations.
From an independent brokers point of view, before the recession most of the asset finance divisions would all take broker business. There was Lombard, Bank of Scotland , Yorkshire Bank and Barclays to name a few. Whereas now the banks are tending to look after their own customers and wont accept broker introduced business. Therefore if you go to your own bank and perhaps you are not strong enough to get approval there are few high street options available. In addition some high street banks wont offer hire purchase or finance lease facilities less than £50k. HSBC is a prime example. They might agree a facility for you however it will be done a straight forward commercial loan which means taht if you go back to your bank for some further funding you risk the possibility of not being able to get further funding.
The good news is that there are still one or two finance companies that deal exclusively with the broker market that are willing to take 3rd party business. XL Business Finance has had over ten years experience of helping such businesses. Credit is still tight to come by and as such we can add value to your business because we know exactly how to structure a deal for a finance company in order to get the best possible chance of approval. Believe you me it is worth the effort because the next tier of funders are extremely expensive!
Tags: Asset Finance, finance lease, hire purchase
