Birmingham broker Navigate Commercial Finance is celebrating its third year in Birmingham, during which the team has seen £310m of funding requirements across the Midlands.
Navigate Commercial Finance has helped secure new funding facilities for 106 businesses across a wide variety of sectors, with the top six being manufacturing, wholesale, construction, recruitment, leisure, and real estate. From 2024, 64% of funding in these sectors has been used to support growth (42%), capex (9%) or M&A (13%) activity. M&A activity has been strongest in the wholesale sector with 54% of funding requirements seen here by Navigate Commercial Finance.
The firm itself also continues to record strong growth after posting a 142% increase in revenue and an 180% rise in lending and approved facilities. Further plans are afoot to open an office in Coventry and recruit sales managers to strengthen its business development team.
Paul Varley, Managing Director at Navigate Commercial Finance explains: “There’s no question that demand for borrowing is still high for SMEs with alternative funding solutions opening the doors for many who have struggled to access the right finance previously. Whilst some economic uncertainty remains due to the upcoming budget and recent slowing of growth, with business confidence recently reaching its highest level in seven years and base rate reducing for the first time in four years, we don’t see demand for borrowing easing. Our role is to make the funding experience easier for both the borrower and lender and we’ve seen some strong growth from businesses across the Midlands region and beyond.
“Despite challenging headwinds, we’ve had an exceptional year of growth ourselves, cementing our position as one of the region’s most trusted outsourced commercial finance teams. We’ve achieved growth across all metrics, increasing our lending book significantly and have a strong credit approved funding pipeline. We’re celebrating our third year of trading, and I’m delighted with the progress we’re making which is testament to the dedicated Navigate Commercial Finance Team as well as the relationships we have with our clients, introducers and lender network. It’s an exciting time for the business and this new financial year has continued with our growth accelerating month on month.”
Managing Director Paul Varley established Navigate Commercial Finance in 2021 to help SMEs raise finance that is best suited to their needs. The team works directly with businesses as well as a range of professionals including accountants, banks, alternative lenders, and corporate finance specialists to support any of their clients seeking new finance facilities. Principal funding solutions provided include invoice finance, asset based lending, cashflow loans, asset finance and real estate finance.