The British Business Bank, the UK government-owned economic development bank, has today announced a second £51 million tranche of funding for Henry Howard Finance (HHF) under the Bank's ENABLE funding programme.
At the same time it has expanded its equipment finance team with two new appointments.
The transaction is the latest made under the programme, which aims to increase the supply of finance to smaller businesses in the UK looking to acquire business critical assets to boost their growth.
The facility, partially guaranteed by the European Investment Fund, comes on top of an existing £51 million asset finance facility granted in 2016 and will allow HHF to extend its leasing and asset finance offering to a larger portfolio of UK smaller businesses.
HHF is one of the UK's largest independent finance houses and currently has three business divisions that support the SME market with access to finance, equipment and commercial funding services:
Reinald de Monchy, managing director of Guarantee & Wholesale Solutions British Business Bank (pictured above), said: "This increased facility will allow HHF to continue to build on their track record in providing much needed asset finance allowing these types of businesses to realize their growth potential.”
One of British Business Bank's key objectives is to diversify finance markets for smaller UK businesses. The ENABLE funding programme helps to meet this objective by allowing smaller providers of business finance to be more active, and compete with larger providers.
"Since the first transaction in September 2015,” de Monchy added, “the ENABLE Funding programme has supported lending to over 17,000 businesses and has committed more than £444 million to smaller finance providers."
Mark Catton, CEO at HHF, added: "We are proud to support SMEs in the next chapters of their business success stories, and this facility will allow more companies to grow and prosper."
British Business Bank programmes are currently supporting more than £5.2 billion of finance to nearly 75,000 smaller businesses. The Bank also works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses:
The extra funding follows shortly upon news that HHF has made two new appointments in its equipment leasing team.
Marie Dunkley (pictured above), from Bristol, joins the company to create a new vendor-led asset finance business from her role of UK Sales Director for Construction, Transport and Industrial at DLL (De Lage Landen).
Prior to this Dunkley held senior roles at Hitachi Capital and GE Capital and has previously won the NSA Sales Director of the Year Award.
Dunkley said: “I’m delighted to join Henry Howard Finance, the company’s forward-thinking approach, customer centric ideals and growing own book lending is an exciting journey that I’m keen to be part of as they establish a stronger presence in vendor asset finance’.
Charlie Ryley (pictured below), from Cardiff, joins the company from his role of account manager at Pinnacle Telecom (Wales) Ltd, and will join the innovative vendor finance team under the leadership of Gyles Thompson.
Ryley said: “A major priority for HHF is to ensure all customers are provided with the best possible service. Previous roles have set me up well for that challenge and I’m really pleased to be joining such as innovative company that continually puts the customers first”.
