Asset finance leasing is becoming increasingly more difficult to organise. With the exit of Lombard and Hitachi from the broker market there are only a few funders remaining in the market place. Many high street banks have their own asset finance division but they tend to do only the bigger deals over £50,000 for their own customers. If the deal is for under £50,000 they will potentially push the customer down the loan route.
The problem with this is that it could restrict a businesses ability to organise future non asset based lending. What is the point of utilising valuable credit lines and funding asset purchase via loans instead of using a third party funder to provide a hire purchase or finance lease facility. In our opinion any capital expenditure is best suited to a hire purchase or finance lease facility which will leave the bank credit lines available for a rainy day.
We say it time and time again. Use the bank for clearing facilities, an independent for your factoring and invoice discounting. Remember if you need an overdraft it wont grow with the business like factoring and invoice discounting and any overdraft is potentially repayable on demand. Using a third party leasing company will ensure that you don’t have too many eggs in one basket and you are not exposed too much to any one financial institution.
There are still third party finance companies open for business. Getting deals agreed isn’t as easier as it was 18 months ago however a good independent finance broker will be able to guide you through the pros and cons of the different finance companies.
