The finance market is ever-changing particularly among younger, more modern businesses who are shunning the traditional High Street banks in favour of alternative finance providers.

This the finding of survey of 512 small businesses carried out by ThinCats, a fintech lender to mid-sized SMEs.

The survey found that of businesses less than ten years old, only 32% would consider their bank to be their first port of call. This contrasts with businesses over 35 years old where 71% would default to their main bank. When it comes to working with an alternative finance provider, 23% of younger businesses are more likely to feel comfortable with this approach compared to 4% of the oldest SMEs.

Not surprisingly, where decision makers were aged under 35, 65% said a traditional High Street bank was not the first place they would go for funding. This contrasts with decision makers aged 55 and over, where it was just under 30%.

Sectors such as IT, telecoms and marketing, which are traditionally knowledge or service-based are those leading the way in moving towards alternative finance providers.

Worryingly, 30% of SMEs who were rejected by their first-choice lender, stopped searching for external funding altogether. This suggests that many businesses, of whom 55% said high street banks were the first lender approached, are potentially giving up when there are suitable alternatives available.

This demonstrates that more still needs to be done to highlight the range of alternative finance providers in the marketplace.

In this episode of the Business Finance Bulletin a look at the announcements in this week’s Budget focusing on small business finance issues. There’s news of a fund for growing businesses, Help to Grow, an extension of the Enterprise Finance Guarantee programme and a further step forward in the launch of the Bank Referral Scheme.

When comes to dealing with finances time is also short and that’s why clients of alternative lender Just Cashflow can now benefit from the launch of a new mobile app. We take a look at how it can help time-stretched business owners.

Concluding our look at the findings from the latest SME Finance Monitor report we review small businesses attitude to debt and awareness levels of alternative funding sources such as crowdfunding.

In the Business Finance Tip of the Week a signpost to a video on how to calculate and use the Stock Turnover Ratio to improve your stock management and boost your cash position.

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