SME fintech lender ThinCats, has announced the appointment of Andy Hegedus as Director of Underwriting. Hegedus brings a wealth of industry experience to ThinCats, having joined the commercial banking industry in 1979, working across both client-facing and internal roles. Andy joins from Barclays, where he spent 12 years in the SME credit team, supporting businesses…
Vanquis Bank has announced that it will apply to the Banking Competition Remedies’ (BCR) Capability and Innovation Fund in order to accelerate their plans to address the shortage of tailored products on the market to support the self-employed population. Vanquis Bank will seek Pool C funding, which is geared toward facilitating the expansion of business…
British businesses could have £593 billion locked up in excess working capital, potentially hampering growth and leaving them exposed to economic uncertainty, according to new research from Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking. The Lloyds Bank Working Capital Index combines the bank’s proprietary research and IHS Markit’s UK Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data to calculate the working…
Seven in ten (70%) businesses that have attempted to raise capital have failed at least once, according to the new report from Smith & Williamson, the financial and professional services firm. Securing funding is often critical to helping businesses scale quickly and maximise their potential. However, it’s often not plain sailing. Two in five (39%)…
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that it will be introducing new rules designed to prevent harm to investors, without stifling innovation in the peer-to-peer (P2P) sector. When the FCA set its first rules for P2P, it committed to keep these under review as the sector evolved. These new rules are designed to help…
More than half of small business owners say they want more help managing their finances, with almost a third adding they have lost sleep over money matters as Brexit continues to dominate the UK economy according to a report funded by small business finance broker Funding Options. Fifty-one per cent of small firms said they “need…
Invoice finance and trade finance company, Working Capital Partners, have been placed into Administration. According to reports, the insolvency appears to be as a result of recent client fraud. Working Capital Partners, were also members of UK Finance (the industry body for the asset finance sector. The company offered a selective invoice finance service, a…
UK property finance firm Lendy has collapsed with Damian Webb, Phillip Sykes and Mark Wilson of RSM appointed as administrators following a court order on Friday (24th May 2019) afternoon. The administrators are working closely with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) who consented to their appointment over the company. The lender was under investigation by…
The announcement by Chancellor Philip Hammond that HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) would revert to secondary preferential creditor status for taxes collected on its behalf in all insolvency situations will likely have a significant negative impact on lending to UK Plc, according to analysis by Duff & Phelps. In a return to the pre-Enterprise Act…
A new report published by Oxford Economics has found that a decade after the financial crisis, bank lending to small businesses has failed to recover significantly. The “Big Business of Small Business” report, launched in partnership with Funding Circle, finds that small business lending makes up a tiny proportion of banks’ overall balance sheets. In the UK,…