Allica Bank completes £500m of asset finance lending

With Allica Bank reaching an impressive £500 million asset finance lending milestone this week, Asset Finance Connect spoke to Allica’s head of asset finance sales, Brandon Hall, to find out the secret to their success.

Allica Bank – the business bank dedicated to serving established businesses – has revealed it has lent over £500 million in asset finance.

Having launched its asset finance arm in January 2021, Allica says that over the past 12 months it has lent almost double the amount it lent in the previous two years combined.

This comes following the bank recently revealing that it achieved its first full year of profitability in 2023, and that it has now lent a total of over £2 billion to established businesses, with the majority of its other lending being in commercial mortgages. Last year it also launched a new growth finance product, designed specifically to provide flexible finance for growing businesses.

The bank has also seen growth thanks to the expansion of its product offering to include soft and medium assets, for which it has already seen nearly £50 million of applications. It has also been a notable proponent of the Recovery Loan Scheme, which has allowed it support applications that would otherwise sit outside its credit appetite.

Currently offering fixed rate HP funding, Allica’s asset finance division is seeing an average of over 750 applications each month, up from 450 in 2022. To further increase their market share, Allica is looking to expand their product offering with the development of more flexible payment structures and the introduction of finance leases.

Hall notes that the exponential jump in asset finance applications is down to being able to deliver consistent and fast decisions to brokers thanks to a mix of its technology and people.

Technology is key to Allica’s success, according to Hall, and is at the “top of the list” in terms of further improving Allica’s offering. Allica is currently fine-tuning its auto decisioning system to incorporate machine learning which Hall sees as “a game changer,” allowing its team to spend more of their time on added value rather than admin.

Despite being the “best in the market” for their documentation procedure, Allica is also looking to further improve this process by implementing more automation into the system.

Hall sees Allica’s mix of human relationships and powerful technology as key to their success, describing the Allica team as the company’s “biggest asset.”

As a relatively new business, Hall is proud to note that the entire Allica team want the business to be successful: “they all want to hit growth targets and milestones, and when you have that common goal, it is really powerful.”

In 2023, Allica expanded its business development manager team by 40% and grew its sales support team to 19 people.

Allica’s reputation for consistency, fast and efficient decisions with clear communication and sign off has led to an effective broker-lender relationship resulting in a lot of repeat business from their broker panel.

Hall believes that Allica’s partnership with the broker channel is vital for their development and reaching their asset finance lending milestone: “The whole Allica team is incredibly grateful to our broker community for their support and feedback, without which we would never have reached this milestone.

“We are looking forward to working closely with them as we build out our proposition even further. By continuing this partnership, I am sure we’ll soon be celebrating £1 billion of asset finance lent to help established businesses achieve their goals,” continued Hall.

Brandon Hall is adamant that “the broker channel is here to stay,” with Allica’s broker panel continuing to grow.

“Allica has built a reputation among brokers for fast and consistent decision-making, supported by top-class customer service. You can see this in our broker satisfaction surveys, in which 89% rate our service as good or excellent.”