finance

Can you believe that it’s five years since we started Seneca Trade Partners?

We can’t, but we’ve checked, and it really is.

In the past five years we have helped nearly 200 SMEs with stock finance, which in real terms means we have funded £43m of stock purchases on behalf of our clients. We’ve grown from a standing start to a revolving payment facilities book of £10m, and we’ve seen our flexible facilities work exactly as intended during the worst global pandemic in generations.

What’s more is that we feel like we are only just getting started.  We are even more excited about the next 5 years than we were when we started the business. The UK SME space remains chronically underserved when it comes to genuinely flexible stock-purchasing finance.  We had high hopes for our new-to-market product when we started, but even these aspirations have been surpassed by how our facilities performed during the worst stress test in living memory.

The quick-turn nature of our facilities helped our clients to trade out of their existing financed stock holdings before the worst of the lockdowns hit. They could then either bide their time before starting trading with their facility again whenever they chose to (we never charge non-utilisation fees), or they could instead pivot instantly to a new sector (PPE being the obvious one) and commence trading in that space.

The purchasing power provided by our 100% LTV stock finance facilities puts our clients right at the front of the queue when it comes to obtaining scarce stock from suppliers. The ability to pay in full prior to shipment often means our clients are first in line for stock when it comes to suppliers prioritising production.

The confidence that we obtained from not just surviving but growing through this period has given us an added push to get on with some major projects within our business. Projects that when completed will see us take a step change in size.  We are investing heavily in our core IT systems with the goal of being able to put the real-time trading and accounting information that we see, in the hands of all our clients, and we are recruiting new team members around the country to give our introducers the option of dealing with a more local touch point.

The last five years have been great, we hope and expect that the next 5 will be even greater.  We can’t wait.