British Business Bank agrees £21.25m increase to ENABLE Funding facility with Tower Leasing to boost asset finance for smaller businesses

The British Business Bank has agreed a £21.25m increase of its existing ENABLE Funding facility with Bracknell-based Tower Leasing.

The original £25.5m facility was agreed in December 2017, which allowed Tower Leasing to provide additional asset finance to smaller businesses looking to acquire business critical assets to boost their growth.

This new facility size of £46.75m will allow Tower Leasing to support a strong origination pipeline built upon long-standing relationships with equipment vendors/resellers and customers, continuing to provide asset finance to UK smaller businesses.

Tower Leasing was established in 1989 and provides or arranges asset finance primarily for business-critical soft assets to smaller businesses in the UK, either by financing them using its own balance sheet or by brokering to traditional finance providers. Tower specialises in finance leases for the acquisition of business and office equipment, IT loans and business loans to UK smaller businesses.

Launched in 2014, the ENABLE Funding programme supports the British Business Bank’s key objective to drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK by supporting access to finance for smaller businesses. Providers of finance to smaller businesses often lack the scale required to access the capital markets – a key source of funding for lending institutions – in a cost-efficient manner.

The ENABLE Funding programme warehouses newly originated finance receivables from participating originators, bringing them together into a new structure. Once the structure has sufficient scale, it aims to refinance a portion of its funding on the capital markets, helping smaller finance providers to tap into institutional investors’ funds.

Kerry Howells, Managing Director at Tower Leasing said: “Our partnership with the British Business Bank through their ENABLE Funding programme has been instrumental in our commitment to providing accessible finance to SMEs across the UK. We are delighted with the approval of this increased facility as it reinforces this commitment, empowering us to expand our support to a wider number of businesses amidst a notably challenging economic landscape.”

Reinald de Monchy, Managing Director, Guarantee and Wholesale Solutions, British Business Bank, said: “We’re very pleased to agree this facility increase with Tower Leasing. Our ENABLE Funding programme is designed to support smaller businesses to scale up and succeed by providing specialised lenders such as Tower Leasing efficient funding to on-lend. This transaction with Tower Leasing also strengthens our wider objective to increase both the amount and diversity of funding available to smaller businesses from a wide variety of finance providers.”

Source: British Business Bank