Major milestones on the way to delivering our SME funding vision

Date 13th October 2016 //
Author Adam Tavener, Chairman, Clifton Asset Management and pensionledfunding.com

In the whirlwind of activity, innovation and execution that is the norm on the Alternative Business Funding portal, it is not unusual for significant events to come along, often a few at a time.

The last few days have been marked by two of these events that, by any standard, carry more significance than much of the other stuff.

In fact it’s fair to say that they are among the genuine milestones passed on our journey.

The first of this week’s events was confirmation from the British Business Bank that our expression of interest in becoming a designated portal under the terms of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 has been successful and that we are invited to submit a formal proposal.

It’s fair to say that, although we thought our EOI was pretty good, and we believe passionately in the innovative and collaborative ABF model, you are never quite sure that what you submit is what they want to see… until they come back and tell you that you’re through. Deep sigh of relief…

At this point I don’t know who else made it past this stage of the process and who didn’t but a warm well done to those who did, and commiserations for those who just came up a bit short.

The other biggie was a traffic milestone, as the ABF portal has just passed the 30,000 visits mark. Thirty thousand site visits in just over a year with a zero marketing budget, hmmm, that tells me that there might actually be something to this collaborative model after all.

No doubting that there is still much to do in delivering our new SME funding vision but these two milestones passed tell me that we are well on our way. Happy days.