Patron Profile
Setting the tone Real world lending at the end of the phone Mark Standley National Commercial Director Assetz Capital
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ast your mind back to 2011. We were still feeling the fallout of the global financial crisis and bank funding for businesses was in short supply. Couple that with the impact on deposit rates slashed to near zero by banks and building societies, it’s no wonder people were struggling to secure a fair return on their money and protect against inflation. Hard times! There’s always a light-bulb moment behind every great idea – and it was no different for us. With Chris Mellish – now chief technology officer, our head of property David Penston, and chief executive officer Stuart Law, we brought together our collective experience and industry knowledge to not only address the imbalanced grip of the more traditional banks, but to offer a simple and fair way for SMEs who often struggled to access finance to borrow through our marketplace. So came Assetz Capital in 2013. Through our development finance, commercial mortgages and bridging finance, we’ve pioneered ‘real world lending’ to meet the needs of modern brokers who increasingly want to drive potential growth for their clients and make a positive impact on the world around them.
Leading the way To date, we’ve lent over £1.5 billion – and are targeting record levels of lending in 2022. In the last couple of years, we’ve funded 16 | NACFB
the building of around one in every 12 new homes built by SME housebuilders in the UK and supported many other types of businesses from manufacturers to care homes and wholesalers to hotels, all driven through our nationwide team of regional relationship directors – technical and highly experienced finance professionals. Our journey so far has been an exciting one, with our first big milestone coming just one year after launch, as we hit the £50 million mark for loans facilitated to UK SMEs. We’ve crowdfunded successfully, won awards, achieved a five-star rating from Defaqto and have successfully lent to over 1,100 businesses. Change is constant in the lending market. Two years ago, we all found ourselves in the middle of another far-reaching crisis, this time with the COVID-19 pandemic. With the initial lockdown introduced as a first response – which led to an immediate and severe liquidity crisis – then the tiered-system and local restrictions further down
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To apply for a loan, all we ask brokers to do is to give us a call to discuss their client’s requirements
