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Netwise House
At the end of 2013, Netwise Hosting borrowed £100,000 from rebuildingsociety’s lenders. The purpose of the loan was to build a brand new datacentre eleven times the size of its existing datacentre, to help the business expand and serve London’s thriving Tech City industry.
Last week, rebuildingsociety had a sneak peek at the progress being made by MD, Matthew Butt, and his team.
Sometimes opportunity comes knocking at the funniest of times…
We know that 4 out of 5 businesses are not looking to raise finance at any given time, but if a competitor knocks on your door tomorrow asking you to buy them out, or if you spot a great opportunity for growth, then it is best to be prepared. After all, they say the definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity, so let us help you to get lucky…
As someone running a growing business, you need to know a few things you can do to strengthen your credit risk profile now, so that when you do come to borrow funds, your business is best placed to be seen as low-risk, ensuring you get better interest rates.
It will take you 15 minutes to fix a few things that could save you thousands later on… (more…)
This week rebuildingsociety decamped to the NACFB’s commercial finance expo at the NEC in Birmingham. It’s fair to say we weren’t the only alternative finance provider, but encouragingly for the NACFB and business owners across the UK, there was an even spread of traditional and alternative providers. Now is a good time to get business finance for a broad range of businesses.
There were more people present this year than last and awareness of our brand and proposition was strong. The opening questions have changed from ‘what do you do?’ and ‘what is crowdfunding / peer-to-business lending’ to ‘how are you different to other providers?’
We always say we focus on offering a personal service to brokers because we understand that every case is different and brokers value flexibility. Very often the way a case is presented can be the determining factor between an application being accepted or rejected, rather than the underlying health of the business, so we want to help brokers and their clients get that right.
A common theme from the conference was a lack of new blood coming in to the commercial finance market. Brokers are getting older, so there was debate around the future of the market, with so few being trained traditionally.
Another hot debate was the potential role of institutional finance in alternative markets. Funding Circle’s recent hook-up with Santander has accelerated the argument and because of the value platforms can offer it is more a question of when, not if, institutional money starts to flow into the commercial finance market through alternative providers.
A telling takeaway message was a stat from one of the seminars – 1 in 8 businesses can’t name a single alternative lender to banks. In some ways a strange way to mould the statistic, because that says 7 in 8 can…
Roll on the London event in November where we’ll be exhibiting again!
Whatever your opinion of the role of Government in free market economics, there is no questioning the importance of its stance and the value of a positive position to those operating in a market that has been touched by Government, like alternative finance.
Anything new in financial services poses challenges for Governments and questions like:
Is it a good thing? Should we regulate it? How can we get involved without compromising our neutral position?
The situation is arguably more complicated now given the sheer acceleration in disruption, driven by technology, which is leaving policy makers behind.
This week, at a seminar hosted by Interel, the Public Affairs consultancy, the attitudes of policy makers towards alternative finance were revealed in the launch of a paper called ‘Banking on Innovation: Uncovering the Political Barriers to Innovative Financial Services’.
What was clear in the report was a low level of understanding exists among MPs and trust is yet to be established from a survey of approx 25% of MPs: (more…)
Dan Rajkumar, MD of rebuildingsociety shares some tips for business owners picked up during his 12 years of running businesses.
Sometimes opportunity comes knocking at the funniest of times…
We know that 4 out of 5 businesses are not looking to raise finance at any given time, but if a competitor knocks on your door tomorrow asking you to buy them out, or if you spot a great opportunity for growth, then it is best to be prepared. After all, they say the definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity, so here are a few hints and good practice tips help you to get lucky…
As someone running a growing business, you need to know a few things you can do to strengthen your credit risk profile now, so that when you do come to borrow funds, your business is best placed to be seen as low-risk, ensuring you get better interest rates.
It will take you 15 minutes to fix a few things that could save you thousands later on… (more…)
(From the FT, 6 June 2014)
The Treasury is poised to launch a consultation next month on how investors might gain access to the peer-to-peer lending market through individual savings accounts – and whether a new type of Isa should be created for the purpose.
The move follows an announcement in the Budget that peer-to-peer investing can be included within the Isa tax-free wrapper for the first time next April.
Wrapping p2p lending in an Isa will boost returns by making them exempt from income tax – saving 40 per cent for higher-rate taxpayers.
But the practicalities of wrapping p2p within an Isa are proving complex, and the Treasury plans to launch a consultation in July.
May was our busiest month in terms of loans completed, with 11 flying off the shelves, with £382,500 advanced, more than double that of April. It also means we’ve already done more loans in those five months than in the whole of 2013.
Loan size was smaller than the average throughout 2014, which has pulled the average size down further. Our average in 2014 is now £43,006, £10,000 less than the average size in 2013.
This might indicate investor preferences for lots of smaller loans and we’re in a good place to test that theory in June with large requests from GRA Project Management, which has already drawn down two loans with us in the past, and Old Hall Inn and Cottages Ltd.
