Rarer than Hens Teeth !

The banks are still not lending to SME's. According to the Bank of England today, "small businesses are still being rejected, ignored and treated unfairly by banks", MPs were told yesterday.

Sir Mervyn King said yesterday that  "Lending to businesses by banks is still falling"

The big question is when will the lending climate improve. I personally think that although the climate is harsh, it could get worse in the next year as the Greek question on default begins to affect not only Greece, but the banks who have lent money into Greece. To give you an idea to the size of the problem, according to the BBC, bank & private lending from French Banks into Greece is just over $40 billion, Germany next with $11 billion, and the UK at just over $10 billion.

 
If these loans turn into problems, this amount of money will simply disapear from the debt market and will have to be refinanced through other ways, most probably via the relevant governments.

At the moment, although the conditions are very tough, we at Oak have the ability to lease or refinace projects from £1000  up to £5 million plus, both in the UK as well as Europe, and crucially have expanded our lines well into the next few years.

So if you are looking for hens teeth, you know where to come!

Standing still is not an option.

Back in the mid seventies, when I first started in Leasing,  the company I was with launched a sliding  card lease calculator, which worked out the lease rentals for every £100 increase in costs. This was considered the most cutting edge sales aid tool available. At this time, remember that a simple calculator was costing in the region of £8- £ 10, and back in the 70's that was quite a lot of money.

How things have changed, last week, Oak Leasing launched  the first equipment leasing app in the UK. The amount of information and the rate calculator available would be something that dreams were made of back in the seventies.   From simple calculators, we moved on to PC's, whose capacity and speed have changed evrybodies lives. Now it seems that PC's are beginning to look dated, with new cloud technology starting to take over.

I have said many times, standing still is never an option, and technology is helping everybody access information quicker, and at a time that suits them best.  That was one reason why we launched the Oak leasing App, you can work the rentals out, propose the customer, whilst sitting with the customer. Leasing has now access to another closing tool, and in this present climate where only last week  Vince Cable was bemoaning the bankers lack of providing enough credit, many people forget that lease finance is a simple but effective tool in overcoming budget restrictions as well as cost objections.

Now where was my sliding rate calculator.