Posted on 27.12.2013, by Rob Warlow
In the government’s quest to make more finance available to SMEs it has announced its intention to help alternative financiers have access to better information on SME’s credit background.
The commitment to make it easier for newer lenders to assess loan applications via improving access to SME credit data was made in the 2013 Budget. Since then the government has been working with the Bank of England, the Office of Fair Trading, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the banking industry to investigate options.
If you have read my blogs you will know that when assessing the creditworthiness of small businesses an important source of information for the lender is a business’ past financial performance. The problem is that more in-depth information (outside of that held by the Credit Reference Agencies) is often held by the bank that provides the business’ current account and is not widely shared.
The result of this is that challenger banks and alternative finance providers don’t have access to the same level of information as the bank with which the small business already has a relationship.
The solution being proposed by the government is that banks will be required to share information on their SME customers with other lenders through Credit Reference Agencies (CRA).
The government has opened a consultation period until mid February for industry players and other interested parties to comment. It will be interesting to see the banks responses to the request to share a deeper level of information they hold on their clients.
Rob delivered a series of 3 workshops aimed at understanding how finance houses look at finance propositions with the aim for us as a team to deliver more of a bespoke offering to our customer base. The training was delivered to a mixture of staff who work with new businesses start-ups and existing established businesses across Mid & South West Wales. Rob delivered the training with an abundance of passion and has really helped my team look at financial propositions in a different light, many thanks again Rob and I look forward to work with you in the near future.
I wanted to thank you for such an insightful, energetic, and entertaining talk at the Kevin Green Wealth event on securing funding and creating a successful plan. It was brilliantly executed and a pleasure to listen to and the ideas I’ve learned are definitely going to help me in going forward.
Hi Rob, it was so interesting and entertaining listening to you at the Kevin Green Wealth Coach Workshop in Reading this weekend! I didnt realise you can find Finance proposals such fun!. Brilliant tips! Thanks.
Further to your recent presentation at LEAD Wales just wanted to say it was very refreshing to see somebody talk passionately and positively about finance, very insightful!
Rob kindly agreed to attend the recent Pontypridd RFC sponsors networking evening and delivered what can only be described as an excellent talk on 5 Tactics to Boost Your Business and Your Profits. He kept the audience engaged throughout and the feedback from everyone was excellent. Rob is very knowledgeable on business and finance and on top of that is a genuine nice guy. We hope to have him back at a future event and I have no hesitation in recommending Rob’s services.