Finance Connect Summer Conference 2026 exceeds 500 delegates

More than 500 delegates have booked to attend the Finance Connect Summer Conference 2026 at King’s Place, London on 4 June.

The conference brings together the asset, auto, and equipment finance communities (receivables returns in the Autumn), with attendees drawn from banks, captives, and independent lenders. Delegates include lenders, wholesale funders, and brokers, alongside professional advisors and industry vendors.

Eva Lindsay, COO at Finance Connect, said: “The industry understands the real value that Finance Connect delivers and has bought into it more and more with each passing year.

“We are the independent marketplace for industry ideas and discussion. We enable the genuine sharing of ideas and debate free from political or commercial interests. We make sure that all parts of the industry have a voice. Our function is to enable informed debate and to build understanding. We take this role very seriously and we are thrilled by the industry’s response.”

Edward Peck, founder of Finance Connect, said: “The level of bookings is a mark of a vibrant UK finance industry — collaborating to better understand the opportunities and challenges we are facing.

“The appetite for serious, structured conversation about where this industry is heading has never been stronger.”

Finance Connect curates great discussions and great communities. Through its events, the business aims to spark the ideas that will deliver growth to the industry and better outcomes for its customers — bringing the right people together, around the right topics, in the right way, so communities become genuine marketplaces for ideas.

Highlights from the agenda

Under the theme UK Under Pressure, the conference runs three parallel streams exploring the structural shifts reshaping specialist lending.

War, regulation and the desert of innovation: what comes next for UK auto finance. The day opens with Kana Inagaki, automotive correspondent at the Financial Times, interviewing the chief executives of leading UK auto finance lenders about the industry beyond redress. US tariffs are compressing OEM margins, Chinese brands have reached 6% European market share, EV residual values remain under sustained pressure, and brand loyalty has fallen below 20%. Yet the management bandwidth that should be responding to all of this is still consumed by compliance. Karl Werner of Advantage Finance has called the last three years “a desert of innovation.” The session asks what comes next.

Government intervention in business lending. A plenary panel moderated by Christian Roelofs of Finativ will assess the expanded British Business Bank programmes, asking lenders how well they work, what could be done better, and assessing the vital role of the scheme in delivering additionality — lending to borrowers who would not otherwise be reached by the commercial market. Reinald de Monchy (British Business Bank) is joined by Paul Edwards (NatWest), Kerry Howells (Tower Leasing), Andy Taylor (Haydock Finance), and Matt Woodcock (Responsible Finance).

The SME customer journey. Christian Roelofs returns to chair a panel on friction points in SME finance, with Jim Higginbotham (NACFB), Mike Randall (Simply Asset Finance), Astrid Michael (United Trust Bank), and Cat Powell (Novuna Business Finance). How to tackle loan stacking and how to route SMEs to the right products for their needs will be a key focus for this session.

Beyond pilot purgatory: AI in specialist lending. A keynote interview with Niv Subramanian of Allica Bank opens the technology stream, followed by a panel with Andrew Flegg (Alfa), Murad Baig (Nexus IQ), Colin Tovey (Resilient Management Solutions), and Anis Chenchah (Teamwill), moderated by Richard Huston of Vamos. Discussion will centre on the three-layer model now emerging across the industry — rules-based filtering, agentic AI in the grey area, and human accountable decision-making.

The FCA motor finance redress debate. A Dragons’ Den–format session will debate the motion This house believes that challenging the FCA redress scheme is not in the industry’s interests, drawing out the strategic differences between lenders appealing the scheme and those who have chosen not to. Wayne Gibbard of Shoosmiths will discuss the operationalising of the redress scheme, and brief delegates on where the industry is heading after some auto lenders and one consumer group have challenged the scheme.

Dragons’ Den innovation pitches. Shortlisted innovators will pitch to a panel of senior industry figures, with audience voting determining the winner.

The CarPass.ai soapbox. Tony Lynch will present a live demo of CarPass.ai’s vehicle data product, followed by panel challenge and audience questions in a Hyde Park Corner–style format.

Tickets for the Finance Connect UK Summer Conference 2026 are strictly limited so book now.

Further information and the full conference agenda are available on the Finance Connect UK Summer Conference 2026 website.