A Finance Focus

As many will know OPS-BOX started life at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 when my co-Director Hayley Parker and I were bemoaning the reducing amount of professional service and support given to small businesses.

Having lent money to SMEs and commercial clients for 25 years I also recognised that access to funding was becoming a challenge for many. Of course since our launch the pandemic and the effects of the Government backed support in 2020 have arguably changed the face of finance and funding for ever.

As a result of our intention to make lending more accessible, OPS-BOX became FCA approved in January 2021 and we are now able to introduce and source commercial finance from around 240 or so fully regulated and authorised lenders through our network funding partner, covering all sectors and for all business purposes, whether it be property investment or development, asset finance, invoice financing, bridging loans, unsecured lending and bridging loans, and many more areas.

From £25K to multi millions we will look at it any viable proposition. Why did we do it? Simply to provide more choice, and to provide easy access, help and support to any business looking to borrow, recognising how difficult it had and has become with more traditional avenues.

Simply what we want to achieve is to provide the right product for the right solution, working with good people, and doing business in the right way. Access to a wide portfolio of lenders allows that. As a quick example a client asked me about some financing for a business a few weeks ago. A High Street Bank had turned her down. She was looking for Invoice Financing – in a nutshell within our reach we have over 30 Invoice Financiers, and yes there will be some that have no appetite for that deal but with having that many to access, we will find some. And we did. This goes for virtually any type of commercial funding you can imagine.

Arguably it has never been so important to have a wide reach in terms of funding partners. As I did last year I’ll stand up for the High Street banks and main lenders – they all did a fantastic job through 2020 and earlier this year getting Government backed money out to businesses in need. This does however have a legacy to these primary lenders. Huge amounts of money were lent, it is still unclear how much of this will not be repaid and indeed how much of it was obtained fraudulently by businesses, some of which have now been wound up. On top of this the regulatory process of administering these loans has diverted huge resource into backfill work caused by the speed the lenders had to move at to mobilise funding in 2020. I can’t underestimate the resource that all of this work has caused to all of the primary CBILS and Bounce Back lenders.

In summary, all of this means that the main primary lenders are conflicted and the market is changing rapidly, faster than ever before. They have lent huge amounts of money but have had to divert resources into dealing with the consequence. Their attitude to lending has undoubtedly changed for the worse in 2021 – there are less people on the front line, and a noticeable change in appetite. I have seen this first-hand on many occasions this year alone with good longstanding clients with strong proposals being declined funding for no apparent good reason. I have also seen credit approvals reversed at the 11th hour, causing no end of client frustration. I’ve also heard comments about opening bank accounts taking four weeks and four weeks for valuers to get on site. Believe me I don’t want to bank bash, but this is reality, built on examples I have seen and heard in the last few weeks.

Yes, business in general is cash rich on the back of the governmental pandemic support, but for those in need of support, we are starting to be acutely aware of our core lenders not making themselves available and not supporting their clients. It is not the way it used to be.

This whole situation is a perfect business model for many funders who themselves see a massive opportunity to win market share by being agile to client needs and having an appetite to match. They are not weighed down by legacy problems. Many of these new funders have ex High Street banking senior officials at the forefront and have very quickly become genuine and viable alternatives to the old funding traditions.

Access to many of these lenders is still often not straightforward, apart from through commercial introducers or brokers. Hence OPS-BOX’s decision to provide a qualified and experienced conduit to source these funders and support each borrowing client all the way through the process. Our process and service is simple – we source the funding and stand by your side all the way through to completion.

Casting the lending net wider has never been so important. I said it when we gained the FCA approval in January and now, several months on it’s even more important that business clients have a wider choice. The traditional funding model is changing quickly.

If you would like support securing the right type of finance for your business, you can contact Richard on 07432 557966 or email richard@ops-boxgroup.com