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An opaque range of options make choosing the right lender tricky and inefficient.
It’s time for business funding transparency
01 September 2022
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4 minute read
One of the biggest challenges SMEs face as they gear up for post-COVID-19 growth is accessing funding, but financing new opportunities is becoming difficult in an environment of rising interest rates and tightening lending conditions.
As trusted advisers, accountants are playing an increasing role in trying to find the right finance partner for their small-business customers.
While we all know accountants want to help their clients as much as possible, accessing the best funding can be a difficult task. At the moment, most accountants only have access to “pockets” of lenders, which doesn’t bring a great deal of transparency or choice to your clients. It’s also inefficient.
Accountants are time-poor and largely overworked. Researching and identifying different funding options is probably the last thing they want to be doing.
While some clients will use a mortgage broker, they may not have an experienced professional to help them when it comes to commercial finance – an area that is notoriously opaque.
Transparency in lending is already a hot-button issue in the consumer space. For example, in 2018 the ACCC concluded in its Residential Mortgage Price Inquiry that opaque, discretionary pricing of residential mortgages stifles price competition and makes it difficult for consumers to shop around.
It must only be a matter of time before that same thinking starts moving across the commercial space. It’s time for business funding to get ahead of the curve – this is likely where we’ll be in five years, anyway.
Greater transparency in the commercial lending market is essential for accountants and bookkeepers to share information or refer their clients to other financial professionals.
No accounting professional would feel uncomfortable sending their client to a commercial broker or lender they know little about, yet SME owners will continue coming to them with questions about the best way to secure funding.
Fortunately, technology is helping facilitate greater transparency in the business and commercial finance space. For example, our funding platform, Swoop, allows accountants and bookkeepers to easily access a wide range of transparent options and pass this information onto their clients with the confidence of knowing they’ve secured good terms.
Swoop was started in the UK in 2018 by former KPMG accountants Andrea Reynolds and Ciaran Burke. We’ve helped thousands of British businesses secure funding and see a major opportunity for Australian accounting professionals to use our services in order to help SMEs.
Our banking partners already include ANZ, NAB, Westpac, Liberty, Suncorp, Judo Bank, and Pepper Money. We recently inked a deal with Baskin-Robbins to support their franchise owners.
With more Australian business owners turning to their accountants for advice, it’s worth considering a reliable and transparent partner when it comes to finance.
Cynthia De Vera is strategy manager Australia at Swoop Funding.
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