Back in 2013, Ashley Sharif had a brainwave that would lead to starting a very successful Edgbaston based commercial finance business.
As Managing Director of a private bailiff firm, his team were travelling all over the country, helping his clients collect outstanding debts owed to them.
Ashley’s brainwave was all about how we could lend to some of these businesses, many of whom may only have been going through temporary cashflow problems, ironically often caused by late payments owing to them.
On that day, Little Business Loans was born. With a combination of very careful underwriting, visiting the client to understand their business needs and only lending what the client could afford, Little Business Loans has grown from very humble beginnings to lending over £4 million in the year 2018/19.
“We always speak to every client as an integral part of our decision making process – this helps us to really understand their funding requirements and to make sure that we lend to the right businesses”, said Ashley Sharif. “Over two thirds of our clients borrow from us again and they really value our speed of our service and that we will often fund when more traditional lenders will not.”
Now based in Chamber House, Edgbaston since early 2018 with an expanding team of people, the business continues to grow exponentially. New business is sourced through commercial finance brokers across England and Wales supported by a team of new business development managers.
“We have a really successful lending formula that meets the needs of our clients across the business spectrum from small coffee shops and restaurants to multi-million pound turnover engineering businesses”, says Ashley Sharif. “We continue to expand our network of introducers and we continue to see demand grow even in the current uncertain economic climate. We see Birmingham as our home, and we look forward to growing our business there in the years ahead.”
The hard work and endeavour of the Little Business Loans team was recently recognised at The City of Birmingham Business Awards which saw LBL presented with two prestigious awards – Finance Company of the Year 2019 and Business Enabler of the Year 2019. “It was a real honour to be recognised by SME’s throughout the West Midlands Region” commented Frank Pocock, Commercial Director of Little Business Loans “Our business continues to grow and it is great to see that our commitment to help SME’s expand through our innovative lending products, does not go unappreciated.”
