EDUCATE
FINDING THE
FUNDS
I
n “the old days”, finding business finance used to be a simple task. If your business needed a loan, then all you had to do was walk into your local branch of your bank and ask for a meeting with the manager. The next day, you’d be sitting at their desk with an attentive ear for your business proposal. If you had enough cash and solid financials, you’d be out of there that day with the loan you needed. Unfortunately, loans aren’t so easily accessible in the modern world. The changing role of the bank manager has meant that public access to senior decision-makers has been getting harder and harder. Looking for finance means going up against a wall of bureaucracy,
with a thousand different options and no explanation as to what they all mean. As you can imagine, this has resulted in many businesses nowadays having no idea why they should even be thinking about finance, let alone how to get it. Here’s the thing, though; the
80 Pro Landscaper / February 2020
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H E N RY E J D E L B A U M , M A N AG I N G D I R EC TO R FO R A S C F I N A N C E FO R B U S I N E S S , K I C K S O F F A T H R E E- PA R T S E R I E S A R O U N D F I N A N C E – STA R T I N G W I T H T H E R E A S O N S W H Y C O M PA N I E S M I G H T LO O K TOWA R D S T H I S A N D W H Y I T N E E D N ’ T B E A TO P I C TO B E F E A R E D
process may have changed, but there are still plenty of reasons to be looking for finance, and plenty of ways to get it. Whilst it might seem daunting and inaccessible to the casual observer, in reality there are plenty of finance options available for many different scenarios. From major property
THERE ARE PLENTY OF FINANCE OPTIONS AVAILABLE FOR MANY DIFFERENT SCENARIOS purchases, to renovating equipment and buildings, and even just smoothing out cashflow, business loans can be used for any purpose under the sun. With 36% of SMEs looking to grow in the next 12 months, and interest rates low, business finance is in many ways a better choice for small businesses than it’s been for a long time. To paraphrase an old proverb – the best time to look for finance might have been 20 years ago, the second-best time is most certainly now. Finance doesn’t have to be for big, overarching projects, either. Lenders are open to applications of all sizes and
treat them all equally – a £50k loan to buy machinery is going to get the same attention as a £2m one for property development. Nor should you actually be worried about the accessibility of finance. Whilst the obvious visibility of finance to the general public has decreased, many businesses may actually have much better potential of finding a loan now. In those “old days”, if you didn’t want to do a commercial mortgage, then you were out of luck. Nowadays, there’s a wide variety of options available that are tailored to suit almost any business. You just need to know one little trick to access them – don’t look on your own, but with the aid of a professional. The finance world is quite simply too complicated nowadays for anyone who hasn’t spent years studying it to understand. You don’t have those years – after all, your customers expect expert landscaping services, not business loans. For someone like a broker, though, they’ve spent those years having exactly that expected from them. What you don’t understand, it’s their job to make clear, and use their expertise and contacts to open up doors for you. Whilst sometimes it might seem like finding finance is going up against a monolith of uncaring, inaccessible systems and bureaucracy, it’s still very much available for those who want and need it – you just have to have the right tools on your side.
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20/01/2020 10:45