What holds back your growth — and where can specialist lenders break through?

Edward Peck, CEO and founder of Finance Connect, sets out how connected economic and regulatory pressures affect lending decisions — and introduces opportunities through product, channel and AI innovation to be considered in the conference.

Loans are a growing finance product among SMEs, yet most respondents to Finance Connect’s first-wave 2026 survey of asset finance leaders have declined to provide them. The directional findings point to credit and conduct risk as barriers. A growing market is also one many lenders are choosing to sit out.

As geopolitical, regulatory and credit risks become harder to assess, lenders face greater uncertainty over the cost and performance of their portfolios. That uncertainty weighs on their appetite to innovate and take risk — and on investors’ willingness to back them.

In his opening remarks, “The role of specialist lenders in a troubled world”, Edward connects these lending decisions with the wider pressures on European growth.

Drawing on his October interview with Asle Toje, deputy leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Edward examines six connected drags: Europe’s productivity gap with the US; industrial decline and the energy crisis; falling behind on AI; a shrinking workforce; rising public debt and the prospect of a bond crisis; and a fraying political centre.

Toje’s argument is that these pressures reinforce each other: weak growth deepens each problem, while each problem obstructs the reforms needed to restore growth.

Edward asks how that loop operates in the UK. He examines the tension between the regulator’s growth mandate and lenders’ concerns about intervention years after lending decisions — and what it means for the private investment needed to support growth.

In this session you will:

See how Toje’s six drags connect, how far they apply to the UK and where its position differs.
Know how uncertainty over future intervention shapes lenders’ appetite to innovate and investors’ willingness to back them.
Identify where the commercial opportunity lies in loans for lenders able to manage risk and evidence informed customer choice.

The Finance Connect UK Autumn Conference 2026 is supported by Odessa as Event Partner, with Alfa as Headline Sponsor of the Asset Finance community stream and Dancerace as Headline Sponsor of the Receivables Finance Connect Conference.

View the full Finance Connect UK Autumn Conference 2026 agenda here.

Register here: https://afcconferenceuk.com/financeconnectautumnconference2026/en/page/book-now