The SME customer journey under the spotlight at Finance Connect Conference 2026

At the Finance Connect UK Summer Conference, Christian Roelofs, managing director of Finativ, will moderate a sprint session examining whether the commercial SME lending market is serving borrowers as well as it should — and what the industry can do to fix it.

The session opens by defining the problem. There are growing concerns among brokers, lenders, and trade bodies that some SMEs are being sold loan products where a more appropriate facility — receivables finance or asset finance, for example — would better serve the long-term needs of the business. The customer journey for a loan is simpler and faster. The broker, in many cases, earns more. The SME gets a facility that solves the immediate problem and may compound the underlying one. The evidence is anecdotal and the scale genuinely contested — but the direction of concern is consistent enough to deserve a serious answer.

The session then moves to root causes. The panel will examine why a well-functioning market with talented, driven participants may be producing these outcomes. The answer is unlikely to lie with bad actors. It seems more likely to be system design — the way commission structures, distribution models, data gaps, and the absence of any participant with clear responsibility for long-term borrower outcomes combine to create a market that rewards speed and volume over suitability.

From there, the session turns to proposed solutions. The NACFB has already begun to act: revising its community standards, running a broker assurance programme that includes commission disclosure, engaging with technology platforms such as Capitalize that conduct structured needs assessments before a deal is placed, and holding active conversations with leading loan providers about practical guard rails against loan stacking. Each of these initiatives will be examined honestly for what it can deliver — and what it leaves untouched. The unresolved tension is the commission structure itself. Transparency changes what a borrower can see. It does not change what a broker earns. As long as placing the simpler, less appropriate product generates a better commercial outcome for the intermediary, the incentive problem persists.

The panel will provide their insights across all three stages of the sprint. Conference attendees will be drawn into the debate throughout — through live polling, audience questions, and direct challenge to the panel. The people in this room are the market. The session asks what they are prepared to do differently.

• Learn whether loan stacking is happening at significant scale, where the evidence is concentrated, and what it means for borrower outcomes across the SME market
• Find out what the NACFB’s community standards programme, broker assurance work, and conversations with government can deliver — and where the limits of voluntary action lie
• Explore the role of technology, lender conduct, and cross-sector coordination in fixing the structural problem rather than simply making the existing system faster
• the existing system faster

Panel:

• Christian Roelofs, managing director, Finativ — moderator
• Jim Higginbotham, chief executive, NACFB
• Mike Randall, managing director, Simply Asset Finance
• Astrid Michael, head of asset finance sales, United Trust Bank
• Cat Powell, head of data insight and automation, Novuna Business Finance

Other topics which will interest

This session and the following news-in-focus interview — covering three recent transactions in specialist asset finance: the Simply-Lombard partnership, Compass Business Finance’s acquisition of Industrial Equipment Finance, and Propel’s debut public securitisation — together form the business lending and SME finance stream, which runs from 11.30 to 13.00.

Christian Roelofs ALSO moderates a panel on government intervention in business lending in the plenary session in the morning examining how the British Business Bank and specialist lenders can collaborate to drive more investment to SMEs — and testing whether the Bank’s schemes are generating genuinely new lending or supporting activity that would have happened anyway.

In the afternoon we will be releasing results of our largest ever survey into next gen attitudes towards training – asking young talent whether the industry genuinely provides the right conditions for people to make their long-term careers.

Join the debate at Kings Place, London on 4 June 2026, 9:30am.

Learn more on the Finance Connect UK Summer 2026 conference website.

Secure your place at https://afcconferenceuk.com/assetfinanceconnect2026/en/page/book-now.