Our broker mission statement for 2023

Jeremy Crinall, our Head of UK Introducer Partnerships, reflects on the challenges our Introducer community faced in 2022, and looks ahead to our goals for 2023. 

With such a volatile financial climate, we all faced new challenges in 2022 – including us at Funding Circle. Yet throughout the year, our Introducer team experienced lots of positive change and development, that meant we could still achieve the goals we set out to on day one. 

We’re passionate about helping small businesses thrive and, having worked with our experienced broker channel for so long, we understand how important these businesses are to the UK economy, and their families and stakeholders too. 

That’s why I’m extremely grateful for the support our Introducer community has provided this year. Our team supported over 16,000 SMEs with the finance they needed – whether a Funding Circle business loan, or the Government’s Recovery Loan Scheme that was available in the first half of 2022. We introduced our short-term loans over the summer, which have enabled us to support younger SMEs and widen our reach even further. Plus our market-leading technology meant we could continue to deliver a strong service for our customers, with 70% of applications now getting an instant decision. 

It’s the team’s hard work that also led to us being recognised for our success this year. I’m proud that we were named Unsecured Lender of the Year at both the Business MoneyFacts Awards and the NACFB Annual Patron awards, as well as Socially Responsible Lender of the Year at the NACFB Awards, which is testament to the team’s commitment to driving change and helping others.

At the start of the year, we set out to upskill our team, to champion inclusion and diversity, and to be a market leader in the broker loan space – and I believe we achieved this and more as a business unit. 

Looking ahead to 2023, our goal is to continue to provide a top-tier service to all brokers we work with, which will be the key to our success. There are three key areas that we will focus on: 

Product 

We will move into a multi-product world by offering our business loans, short-term loans and FlexiPay, our new line of credit, to brokers and their clients. 

People 

We will invest in the development of our team, so they can increase their knowledge, further nurture relationships and therefore improve our service as a result. 

Technology 

We’ll assess our broker portals regularly, to ensure they work as efficiently as they can, and continue to improve our automations and decision times – so we can offer the best borrower experience possible. 

We will of course update you with our progress as the year goes on. But for now, thank you for another strong year, and I’m excited to see what we go on to achieve together in 2023

“We are builders, here to build the place where small businesses get the funding they need to win.  We keep building, keep finding ways to improve what we do and how we do it, keep trying to solve problems and make things better.”

Alex Allen, Funding Circle UK MD 2022