The Guardian highlight the struggles for SMEs in a new article

• Posted: 26 October 2012
• In: General News
• Tags: Supporting UK Business, Lending

Yesterday, The Guardian highlighted the struggles and successes of SMEs during the recession. The piece, which collected statements from three companies working in a variety of different sectors - construction, the auto trade and food retail - highlighted the very real struggles small and medium businesses are facing during the economic downturn.

The insight provided by the three companies echoed much of what we have been hearing from the SME market; that businesses are facing increasingly tighter margins as they try to balance their books. Indeed, even for SMEs riding out the economic storm, a full order book doesn't always add up to cash in the bank. It's why we allow our SME customers to unlock their capital through invoice finance.

Speaking to The Guardian, Phil Ross, a director at Cheetham Hill Construction, commented:

"We're being used as a bank. When you read in the papers that SMEs [small to medium enterprises] are going out of business it's because they're not being paid. It's the big bugbear of every SME."

This week, Aldermore previewed the release of our Lift the Lid survey, a comprehensive research paper which asked over 350,000 SMEs about their financials and the relationship with their business bank. You can learn more about the research in this video with our managing director of savings, Simon Healy.

 

We commissioned this survey because we believe in a traditional way of banking; a two-way relationship between our customer service team and our SME clients (And earlier this week, we opened an office in Bristol in order to better service our customers in the area). Over the next few weeks, we'll reveal more from the businesses we surveyed. In the meantime, you can learn about the benefits of invoice finance here.