In our White Paper, Fund the Gap, 75% of SMEs and their brokers said they want strong personal relationships when seeking a lender. Relationships are pivotal at Praetura Lending. In addition to establishing partnerships with our valued intermediaries, our relationships with our clients don’t stop after the money is delivered.
Our relationship team at Praetura Commercial Finance pride themselves on ensuring our introducers and clients experience our More Than Money approach.
Alex Houghton, Senior Relationship Manager, explains: “The relationship journey with our clients begins with their first contact with us and continues for the life of their finance facility and beyond. We support clients with a relationship-driven approach, and we enjoy taking the time to understand the nuances of the business and the markets in which they operate.”
“The benefit of asset-based lending is its flexibility. Finance facilities can be adapted and can grow along with the client’s business objectives. Businesses need lenders who understand this as a funding partner and are able to flex alongside them.”
Alex continues: “A great example of this can be seen with one of our clients, Community Foods, whereby their initial finance facility with Praetura grew from £17m to £23m to support growth after a promising seven months. Community Foods, a supplier of dried fruit, nuts and ingredients needed to quickly seize new market opportunities. Our ability to be responsive and flexible ensured they were perfectly positioned to maximise the market conditions and continue to grow.”
Another illustration of our relationship-led approach is a facility we provided for we.are.sdi a year ago. We supported the leading manufacturer of point-of-sale solutions across the retail and hospitality sectors with a multi-million pound funding facility to enable a management buyout. Working with clients including Boots, M&S and Kurt Geiger, we.are.sdi offers industry-leading end-to-end solutions across the retail and hospitality sectors by manufacturing and installing a wide range of visual designs across shops, restaurants, and cafes.
Throughout 2023, half of the existing we.are.sdi ownership and management team expressed their interest in future retirement. After considering multiple options, the agreed position was to complete an MBO for the business, restructure and exit the retirees. A finance facility was required to enable the MBO and we.are.sdi were introduced to Praetura early in 2024 by Richard Mason from Ricosta Capital.
Matthew Evans, Managing Director at we.are.sdi explained: “From the offset it became clear that Praetura Commercial Finance operated differently from your typical finance provider. Praetura took time to understand the owners, our ambitions and our goals before they then started to look at the actual business. By investing as much time as necessary to understand all aspects, meant that when they came to recommending solutions, not only did the solution make sense, but it also felt like a natural transition into the relationship and the facility. That is how business partnerships should feel. The solution ensured we could enact the MBO timely and efficiently and ensured that finances were complimenting the process as opposed to hindering.”
“12 months later and that partnership feel and approach is stronger than ever, and our account management is fantastic,” added Matthew. “As explained during our discovery and introduction phase, there are nuances to the businesses cash flow and working capital requirements that does mean, on occasion, we need to flex and tweak the facility that we have and every time those requests are examined and understood before decisions are made. This is exactly what this business needs in a finance partner.
“It can so often at times with others feel like a “computer says no”. We never feel that way with Praetura, it is much more a personal approach and a “let’s see what we can do approach” and that’s exactly what we need.”
