This year the annual NACFB Commercial Finance Expo, was back in its more typical position in the calendar, ensuring an even larger turnout than last year – the first since lockdown.
Signature as a business works hard to buck the trend of the industry and the stereotypical view of a short-term property finance provider. And this year once again, our stand reflected our innovative approach to lending, with a range of fun and games.
However, for a lender famed for ensuring all our deals follow through on the terms agreed at the outset with no surprises at the end, a stand featuring Mario-kart, the World’s largest Pac Man game and a Claw-grabber booth, will have been a surprise for many of the visitors to our stand.
This is now regarded as the premier event on the commercial finance calendar and with social distancing now a distant memory, this was one of the best-attended incarnations of the event.
Supporting brokers delivers growth for Signature
The support our team delivered through the recent challenging years of the pandemic, when we stuck to our terms and followed through on deals, has ensured we are delivering the growth we planned and not all with existing broker clients.
Whilst we offer a new approach to lending and supporting brokers and their property developer clients with low rates and fast decisions, this year we concentrated on highlighting our bridging loans, to seize the opportunities presented by an optimistic sector.
Always of interest for those coming to our stand were our competitive rates, but high LTV, quick decisions, personal service and our in-house legal service attracted an equal amount of interest.
A common discussion point was that low rates are of little use if the deal is turned away at the last minute or hiked during the deal. Which is why we are successful and had so many conversations around the quality of our service and our commitment to doing what we say we will do.
It’s not all fun and games
We might have bucked the trend with our amusements on the stand, but we also managed a lot of serious business discussions, with deals brought to us and talk of our selected broker lunches a hot topic throughout the day.
Whilst the show attracted the large number of brokers, lawyers and intermediaries expected, we were still surprised by the number of people wanting to pursue a big prize in our claw-grabber booth – possibly the most valuable prizes in the history of the game.
We had a small number of gold, silver and bronze tokens hidden amongst the capsules of sweets and novelty toys. These tokens entitled the winner to present them to us with a deal in the next six months to win additional broker fees, up to a total for all the tokens of £137,500.
These conversations have ensured a few busy weeks ahead for our lending team, as we arrange the meetings we hope will turn leads into deals, which will be the true measure of whether the NACFB Expo ’22 was a Signature success.
See you next year and don’t forget to drop by to see what innovative approach we have adopted for our stand again in 2023.