The surge of activity seen in the first
quarter of 2010 among the UK’s more active brokers seems to be
spreading, as more introducers than not become active in
recruitment, product development and – most important of all –
securing new funders.
As seen on the opposite page, Kennet
Leasing is returning to its full strength, while other
larger players such as Tower Leasing – like Kennet, a sales-aid
specialist – is in hiring mode.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Some are going so far as to start new regional
offices – a strategy not seen in the introducer market for some
time.
In the motor sector, DSG Financial
Services has just set up shop in Scotland, while asset
finance intermediary Premier Leasing & Finance
(PLF) has just hired ex-One World Leasing sales director Tim Jones
to run its new Manchester office.
While on the subject of PLF, it is worth
mentioning that the company has also just signed the biggest deal
in its 18-year history.
The agreement, involving a £1.6m (€1.9m)
software operating platform for a large police authority, was
underwritten and structured via the middle ticket division of ING
Lease UK.
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By GlobalDataAccording to managing director Greg Jones,
PLF’s new sales director is already looking at more such deals.
Some funder names keep cropping up again and
again, too.
General Asset Management is
known to be more active in the sector, while Canadian entrant
D&D Leasing has reputedly acquired more funds
for broker business after running out after an explosion of
interest in mid-2009.
Meanwhile, Henry Hemsley, who previously
worked for Hitachi Capital’s broker division, has been working with
funder Assured Asset Finance on a consultation
basis, suggesting Assured may be looking to build its broker
business soon.
Hemsley, meanwhile, is understood to be
pursuing a new project of his own.
Elsewhere in the funding environment, things
are not so clear – after a promising start in hiring Richard
Briscoe, the name formerly behind Weatherbys and Broadcastle, the
Close Group has become a lot quieter about its
rumoured formation of a new broker-led subsidiary.
Taking a step back from asset finance, it
seems that many lease brokers are exploring the wider world of
commercial finance.
The ever-entrepreneurial
Robert Keep has launched his brokerage, Norton
Folgate, into the much broader field of “asset-based
lending”, and several factoring brokers are talking about taking
business on from lease brokers (see A new
dawn of co-operation).
For more evidence of the increasing prominence
of leasing in the commercial finance universe, just look at broker
association the National Association of Commercial Finance
Brokers (NACFB), which remains as keen as ever to boost
its leasing and asset finance credentials.
The NACFB’s big project at the moment is its
inaugural Commercial Finance Expo, to take place in Birmingham’s
National Exhibition Centre on 30 June.
This will be the UK’s first event dedicated to
commercial finance intermediaries and their funders, and promises
more brokers under one roof than have been seen since the start of
the recession.
Yet, while this column has relentlessly
pursued news of growth and optimism in recent months, there will
doubtless still be brokerages that come to an end in 2010, a year
in which many introducers are still subsisting on secondary
rentals.
With little fresh blood coming into the junior
end of the market, and many veterans reaching retirement age, it
seems a lot of long-tended customer contact books may be scattered
to the winds over the next year or two as their builders drift out
of the trade.
Not if someone can work out a way to buy and
sell them, says Richard Hall, of asset and motor finance broker
Herts Business Solutions.
Hall wonders if there is a way for brokers to
pick up access to the phoned-in deal streams of retirees.
Presuming that such deals could be done, there
is always the matter of who picks up the phone to ensuing business
– a factor that might put these potential gold mines out of reach
for funders looking to build their sales volumes through contact
acquisition.
“Our customers range between 30 and 70 in age,
with an average in the 50s, and they want to deal with people in
the same range,” Hall says. “They do not want to talk to a fresh
hire working at a sales desk, and they will not want to be
cross-sold on other product lines.”
In short, it seems like the factor that
ensures the value of contact books is the sense of trust that
callers have in brokers “not to overpromise, and not to
under-deliver”, as Hall puts it.
As such, a bigger problem than finding a way
to sell such a commodity is finding a buyer with the right
mentality to make it worth something.
