How Funding Drives Your Business Growth
Imagine you have a future vision for your business. You’re passionate about growing it – investing time, money and emotion. Every decision you make is a step towards the destination you have in your mind. Building a business can be your life’s work or even a baton that’s passed down from generation to generation. So, that all sounds great right? But to reach that vision and curate a stable future for your business, you need to invest – and that often requires funding. Perhaps you are looking to hire new staff or make the move from selling B2B to selling D2C. Maybe you need new equipment, more efficient systems or to buy a new and larger office to facilitate your growth. Could it be that your goal is to acquire a new business, or buy stock in bulk? There are so many monumental moments in a business lifecycle. What they all have in common is that the cash flow is likely to require support through SME funding.
Is the bank manager dead?
High street banks have closed almost 3000 branches across the UK between 2015 and 2018, leaving thousands of SMEs without financial guidance. The world of SME funding has changed enormously over the past 10 years. Where once your high street bank was the go-to place for your funding needs, there are now over 360 lenders in the UK providing thousands of different products for every sector and every need.
“It used to be simple to go to the bank about a business loan. It was probably the same bank where you had your personal account, mortgage, savings accountants and even investments,” says Capitalise.com CEO Paul Surtees.
However, due to the reduction of bank branches and against the backdrop of an increasingly complex financial ecosystem. UK businesses now have no one to turn to. Capitalise interviewed over 1,000 SME business owners in the December 2018 Capitalise.com Small Business Survey. Ninety-eight per cent of business owners answered that they had no idea who their bank manager even was. “Bank manager? At best I have a call centre.” Nine out of ten owners surveyed rated their bank manager as having no impact on their business. But if there is no support from bank managers then where are SMEs turning? Capitalise.com found that the top three sources of advice were: No-one, friends and family, perhaps more worryingly, the internet. As a marketeer, It is disturbing to think that SMEs ability to access services that are most suitable to their business, industry, size and goals is left namely to the strength and effectiveness of a financial institution's digital marketing campaign. It goes without saying that SMEs often find themselves ending up paying over the odds for their financing products, which tend to have unfavourable conditions attached.
Find the right funding for your business
We understand that sourcing the capital needed to grow your business can be a time consuming, and often expensive, endeavour. That is why we have partnered with Capitalise. Capitalise is a business funding platform designed to help SMEs discover finance partners who can add value to your business. By working with lenders who fully understand the unique financial demands of your industry, you'll benefit from their years of experience providing capital solutions to businesses just like yours. Through this partnership, we can access over 100 leading mainstream and independent UK lenders to provide you with a seamless funding service. Ashlee Bloom, Marketing Manager at Raffingers explains “This partnership allows us to deliver an even better experience to our clients. Business owners should have someone they can turn to discuss their financial needs that understand the importance of these needs within the context of their long-term goals, and who have their best interests at heart”
The Raffingers Solution
Roy Butcher, Partner and Finance Specialist at Raffingers says “As accountants and advisors, we are in a unique position where we have a relationship with our clients and gain a strong understanding of both their personal and business goals. This relationship means that we can comfortably act as a gatekeeper for our client's financial needs. At Raffingers, our focus has always been on truly making an impact on the lives of our clients, and now we are in a position where we can truly make this happen.”
Some of the products we can help you with:
Asset finance: Fund any asset, from telephones to forklift trucks, through asset finance
Invoice finance: If you invoice other businesses, use your invoices to get funding
Merchant Cash Advance: Use your credit card transactions to get funding
Trade finance: Pay for goods based on an order using trade finance
Working capital: Get a working capital loan to finance everyday operations
Property finance: Get access to bridging loans, development and commercial finance
Some of the lenders we work with include:
If you are looking to expand your business, need help smoothing out cash flow or want to talk about your existing finance then we can help you. Feel free to contact me via email at ashlee.bloom@raffingers.co.uk or click here