Access to capital can mean the difference between business longevity and business insolvency. Many UK businesses, particularly SMEs, either lack the access to capital or they find it takes a long time to secure funding from traditional offerings.  

In the context of the digital economy, lending and leasing customers, such as manufacturers, retailers and logistic firms, expect to be able to request quotes seamlessly and in a timely manner. Customers don’t have the luxury of waiting for weeks which could cause issues within their supply chain and impact on the ability to fulfil current and future customer demands, or the payment of suppliers for services rendered. 

According to a report by PWC (2017) the global asset finance market in 2015 was worth more than 3.9 trillion pounds. With the rise of disruptive non-banking entities providing competitive financing solutions, lending and leasing is becoming a high growth and highly competitive sector for traditional service providers to continue to play within. 

There is a golden opportunity for traditional banking and finance institutions to tap into the lending and leasing market, however, a key challenge is that their systems are not fit for the digital age. This means that businesses go for the path of least resistance and choose a challenger offering, which are able to provide a quote in a matter of hours rather than days, weeks or months.  

The prevalence of inflexible systems, manual processes, and siloed data management at traditional banks can lead to a high level of operational inefficiencies. There is a clear need to provision for an overhaul and consolidation of core IT infrastructure. 

The key to providing an enhanced lending and leasing customer experience is to work with third party tech providers. By forming partnerships, banks are able to tap into digital technologies that can transform their processes to enhance customer experience. The provision of a multi-channel self-service, provides real-time business insights leading to greater productivity and flexible workflows.

A flexible IT architecture through the opening up of APIs is the key to achieving a competitive advantage, such as loan processing and collection, screening, credit scoring and underwriting all as one end-to-end process. 

At the same time, financial technology is transforming the way entrepreneurs and SMEs apply for loans in the UK, driving greater equality to access financial products and to support their growth. These businesses are currently being under-served by traditional financial providers which may become irrelevant if they do not catch up with demand.  

Small and growth businesses previously were at the mercy of local financial providers can now access a range of services including peer-to-peer lending, accounting software, financial management, insurance, and business valuation services – all as one complete offering.