FLA: members urged to become ambassadors for the industry

The Finance and Leasing Association used the launch of its first impact report to set out a new chapter for the organisation, calling on its members to become ambassadors for the sector and for the contribution it makes to the UK economy.

Presenting The Hidden Engine Behind UK Growth, FLA chief executive Shanika Amarasekara described the moment as one of the most significant in the association’s 35-year history. She called on the sector to change how it talks about itself:

The report puts hard numbers behind that case: £163bn of new lending last year, 41 million live agreements worth £235bn, and finance for more than a third of UK investment in equipment, vehicles and machinery.

To carry that message, she pointed to the impact report as a stronger evidence base, to Paragon as founding impact partner, and to her own engagement over recent months with ministers, officials and regulators. Every member, she said, is an ambassador for the sector’s contribution, and she urged the room to leave with a renewed sense of both pride and responsibility — and to keep powering growth through a period of political change rather than hesitating.

The ambition is clear. For an organisation representing a sector of this scale, the FLA has struggled to make its voice heard when it matters — a point made from its own stage, where FLA chair John Phillipou observed that when government convenes discussions on SME lending, it is the major high-street banks that get the invitation, not the specialist lenders that do the lending. The impact report is an attempt to close that gap, and to arm members to close it themselves.

What is striking is the scale of the change behind the message. The report is not a standalone document but part of a broader repositioning. The change is already visible in the FLA’s output, which has shifted from a steady monthly cadence of lending statistics towards proactive comment pegged to national events.

Behind it, the association has been restructuring since Amarasekara’s arrival, with senior figures in government affairs and communications departing, and external communications now understood to have been handed to Brunswick — a communications heavyweight known not simply for public affairs but for crisis, financial and regulatory communications. It is the kind of counsel organisations retain when the stakes are high and the environment is hostile. This is a significant upgrading of the FLA’s communications firepower, and it suggests the FLA sees itself managing a high-stakes reputational moment.

The context makes these conclusions hard to avoid. On the motor finance redress scheme, the industry has largely found itself responding to a process shaped without it, rather than helping to shape the outcome from the outset. The FLA’s difficulty has been less that it spoke too quietly than that it spoke too late — after the regulator’s approach had taken shape, rather than before, when the underlying realities of how motor finance actually works might have informed the direction. The impact report, the ambassador call and the heavyweight communications support all address the sector’s voice. The harder question is whether they address its timing.

But the trade body’s voice depends not only on how well it speaks to the outside world but on how well it holds its members together behind a common position — and on a live, contested issue such as redress, that cohesion cannot be assumed. An association with a clear and distinctive voice, one it is not afraid to use, is more likely to command the alignment of its members than one that speaks cautiously. Voice and cohesion are two sides of the same coin, and the FLA needs both.

Whether voice is the whole answer remains to be seen. Telling a better growth story is necessary, and the FLA is right to attempt it. But the redress experience suggests the sector’s difficulty has been as much about shaping the substance of policy and regulation upstream — before decisions harden — as about communicating it afterwards. A louder, better-resourced voice will help the FLA be heard. The harder test will be whether, next time, it can move the outcome.