Greater Birmingham has recently launched their very own ‘Access to Finance’ portal in an attempt to get the word out there, to as many West Midlands regionally based businesses as possible, about what routes to finance are currently available and open to them.
As we all know, access to finance can be the lifeblood of any business and as such businesses must know, as well as bring fully informed as to what finance options are open to them directly.
One way to keep such businesses informed has been to hold finance type events, and in recent times there have been a good number of such funding meetings which have been aptly entitled ‘access to funding’. Many of which were being organised by several various local governing bodies, trade groups as well as business groups.
Sadly, as time drew nearer to the meeting(s) and delegate number counts were taken, resulting in a good number of those finance meetings being forced to cancel – seemingly due to lack of interested and/or support.
Greater Birmingham LEP has a plan
So, Greater Birmingham LEP thought they would take a more direct approach by going online, by creating their very own Greater Birmingham Access to Finance website.
Some alternative finance companies specialise in access to finance for businesses and who is concerned at the recent finance event cancellations championed the theory of the Greater Birmingham Access to Finance portal – therefore it is now an initiative which is jointly supported by Birmingham Professional Services as well as the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP.
Could the lack of current interested in finance meetings, be because many business owners are currently so busy that they simply do not want to know about the finance opportunities which are out there, let alone what finance options might be open to them directly!
As a finance provider, you have to say you are left scratching your head somewhat particularly when there has been a demonstrable increase in business borrowing over the past year, the knowledge of what is currently available seems to be poor to non-existent amongst a large part of the business community.