In the past ‘Office Fit Out Finance’ was always a challenge trying to source a lender that was comfortable with the lack of tangible items. When talking to a customer the first request would be to see a detailed breakdown of the costings, followed by a cup of coffee and a highlighter pen marking the items that we could include. Lenders would say we could include flooring, as long as it is not fixed, cabling but not wiring etc etc. What started off with a request for say 50k of office fit out finance turned into a deal of 20k because of the restrictions imposed by the lender resulting in the customer having to pay the 30k balance.
It got to the point where customers would phone up and request office fit out finance and we would just point them towards their bank to get a loan. We were losing out on the deal which resulted in the traditional high street banks writing lots of loan business which at the time they were happy to do. So what’s changed?
Well for a start the economy took a huge downturn mainly down to terrible decisions made by the big players in worldwide banking. UK banks, after suffering huge losses, re-evaluated the type of business they were after and started changing their underwriting criteria. Lending to SME’s was a big no no, one of the biggest banks publicly declared that they would not lend to companies who turned over less than 5 million and many of the other major banks had similar policies. They would only lend if the security was absolute IE charges over property and floating charges over a company’s assets. Sourcing office fit out finance from a bank had now become unattractive.
A few of our lenders, after realising how traditional banks had changed, spotted a huge opportunity and adjusted their criteria to accommodate unsecured lending which included office fit out finance.
**BLUESTAR LEASING CAN NOW OFFER OFFICE FIT OUT FINANCE AND REFURBISHMENT FINANCE TO INCLUDE 100% OF THE PROJECT COSTS**
Our most recent deal was for an existing customer who had only traded for 3 years and who, due to expansion, had purchased new offices and approached us to arrange their office fit out finance. The deal was circa 90k and even included 17k of paint costs. The customers bank had already declined the deal (no surprise), we had no such problems and placed the whole deal with one of our specialist lenders at standard rates.
If your company is looking for office fit out finance please call Bluestar Leasing today on 01420-481500 and one of our business managers will be happy to discuss your requirements and offer you a no obligation quotation.
If you are a dealer who is looking to offer finance to your customers then either call us on 01420-481500 or click here to request our partner pack and a call back from our dealer team.
