I’m often asked what it has been like to be operating on my own instead of under the national franchise umbrella which sheltered me for nearly 20 years. Well after five years of being completely independent I think the answer lies with the client response.

Our client is a young Dutch entrepreneur running a retail and wholesale business in the UK. His activities have recently grown rapidly after he developed his own importing business and he wanted to buy a commercial warehouse unit to hold his stock

April 1991 was when I started out as a commercial finance broker. My first ever completion was a shop in Ashbourne financed by Royal Bank of Scotland, a bank with a lovely culture in those days. What was unusual is that most of my colleagues did not use high street clearing banks then: the favourites were finance houses, Allied Irish Finance, Barclays Mercantile, First National Bank and Woodchester…………remember them?

I’m often asked what it has been like to be operating on my own instead of under the national franchise umbrella which sheltered me for nearly 20 years. Well after five years of being completely independent I think the answer lies with the client response.