Investec Asset Finance (AF) has appointed a new head of sales to help drive “cautious opportunistic growth” following a successful year for the company.

Wesley Harfield joins with 20 years experience in the asset finance industry to help grow the business through increased levels of origination within the broker, direct and vendor channels and will report to head of asset finance at the specialist bank, Mike Francis.

Francis said: “Wesley’s appointment will help us to grow both our already very successful small-ticket broker business and our vendor business, based within our subsidiary Lease Direct Finance, one of the largest asset finance brokers in the UK.”

Harfield joins Investec from his previous role as managing director of Lombard Specialist Finance at time of steady growth for the Asset Finance business which has seen a five-fold increase in profit since 2010.

“I’ve known Mike and the business for a long time – we have done business together before,” Harfield told Leasing Life. “This is an exciting place to be. The recent history has been quite prolific – we are in a good place.”

Harfield and Francis both identified growth in the broker sector where the bank acts as funder as important to the future of Investec AF and suggest they will expand to middle ticket assets as well as new lending products.

“We are looking to expand in a controlled way, said Harfield. “There are some niche product areas I’ve had historical experience of that I think we could move into.”

Harfield mentioned invoice discounting as a possibility, expansion of Investec’s block discounting operation, which currently just a small part of business and contract hire. Investec AF has got a taste for the latter thanks to the acquisition of Masterlease with Leasedrive in late 2010.

Francis is positive about the position of Investec AF and its future and says the division is open for business and seeking new partners in brokers and for vendor finance programmes. However, he identifies the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and the need for asset finance to increase its exposure as two potential hurdles to growth.

The eurozone crisis he says, unlike the global financial crisis of 2008 which was consumer and corporate led, is country led and as yet is not coming down to corporate level but, added Francis, Investec AF’s relatively short-term portfolio of leases will dampen any impact should the crisis worsen and affect business.

With his new head of sales looking at new lending products and an increasing spread of customers Francis has confidence in the future of business.

Article contributed by Leasing Life