NACFB hits new record in SME lending

NACFB members wrote just under £16bn in new business and this year the trade body’s membship is on target to match the all-time record £19.1bn.

The National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers now works with the direct support of over 820 commercial finance broking firms – around 1,600 individual brokers.

It also works with 141 lenders and funders to business and this figure has nearly doubled since the previous peak in 2007.

Paul Goodman, chairman of the NACFB, said: “The recent surge in growth is testimony to the great work that continues behind the scenes and is confirmation that the NACFB and our members continue to be the place to go for commercial finance.

“There are exciting times ahead as the association continues to influence the direction of regulatory travel to the benefit of our members, patrons and ultimately UK SMEs.”

The NACFB has taken on 10 new lenders since the start of the year despite turning down over 40 lenders in the past two years because they could not meet or were not ready for its entry criteria.

The NACFB said it is reaching these high figures not by relaxing membership standards, but by rigorously applying the best standards in the industry.

Goodman added: “We set the bar very high for transparency of funding lines and for processes and for that reason continue to turn down not only lenders, but brokers every week.

“We are forced to turn away these brokers who, for various reasons, fail to meet requirements such as holding professional indemnity insurance, providing suitable references, or signing up to our unregulated members’ agreement in the few cases where consumer credit permission cannot be granted.

“We also constantly monitor our membership and once we passed the 31 of March deadline for those with interim permissions we could see that just sixteen of our members had missed the deadline.

“After further investigation that number came down into single figures, but we have suspended those brokers until they have the right permissions or have satisfied our unregulated member’s criteria.”