Viewpoint: Lending issues for SMEs


Many would be business owners are denied the opportunity to
open a business bank account before they have even had a chance to think about
lending.

Richard Wagner, founder and CEO of APS, said: “Funding for
lending figures from the Bank of England released today show that net lending
to SMEs under this scheme fell by £723m in the first quarter of the year.

“There’s a number that doesn’t make the headlines so often –
the percentage of small businesses that are denied even basic banking services
because they don’t qualify for credit. Why? Because banks can’t figure out a
way to make an SME customer profitable, they don’t even want the business in
the first place. Despite a stream of fashionable rhetoric around SMEs being the
‘engines of economic recovery’, it seems the fuel is tainted by bank greed,
serving their own needs before those of their customer, with inflexible
requirements and offerings. It’s no wonder we have run into a culture of
banking discontent.”

APS is a payment solutions company which enables small
business owners and would be entrepreneurs to open a business account online in
minutes, regardless of credit score. Wagner has had first-hand experience of
the challenges of business banking as he struggled for nine months to secure
the business account required to start APS.

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