Commercial Finance Brokers writing more business than ever!

The National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers has announced the results of its latest annual survey of its members.

The results have shown that the total amount of business written by member brokers has increased by a staggering 43% from £13.3bn last year, to £19bn this year.

Buy-to-let mortgages saw one of the biggest increases from £4.7bn last year to £9.7bn this year – an increase of 104% year-on-year. But the area of largest growth was vehicle finance which saw an incredible 339% growth from £290m last year, to £1.2bn this year.

Chief executive of the NACFB, Adam Tyler, commented: “There have been a few changes in the way the figures have been correlated this year. For one thing, we have asked members to separate out bridging and short-term finance from the commercial mortgage figures, to get a more accurate picture of the size of market and the amount of broker activity. As you can see, there has been a slight drop-off in the amount of commercial mortgages completed over the last 12 months in comparison to the previous year. However, it's a very small decrease and combined with last years methods for calculating activity there is actually a 20% increase in our figures for Commercial Mortgages.”

He continues: “The real growth areas are vehicle finance and buy to let mortgages. The rise in vehicle finance business can be at least partially explained by the impressive growth of the vehicle finance division of the NACFB. Put simply, we have a lot more brokers transacting vehicle finance than we did twelve months ago. Also more brokers are taking the holistic approach and writing business across the entire market: commercial mortgage, leasing and asset finance, vehicle finance, and also some factoring and invoice discounting; as and when the client requires it.

“The other booming market is buy-to-let. Recent press reports have suggested that the UK buy-to-let market has resisted the gravitational pull caused by the black hole in the US sub-prime market, which is currently affecting other areas of consumer finance and these figures certainly seem to back that view – although it must be borne in mind that the full impact of the current credit crunch is unlikely to be seen until next year’s survey results come in.”