The award ceremony, held in the Summer Pavilion at the Tower of London this year, recognises the best and brightest of the bridging world.

British bank Aldemore, which has grown substantially in the last few years, is backed by AnaCap Financial Partners LLP and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners.

Managing Director of Aldemore Commercial Mortgages, Rob Lankey said: “During 2010 Aldemore more than doubled the amount it lent to small and medium sized businesses.

“Across all asset groups, the bank had outstanding loans worth £410.2 million at the end of the year, compared to £198.6 million at the end of 2009. By the end of the first quarter 2011, that number has jumped to £468.7 million; an increase of 14% in just three months.”

Philip Monks, Aldemore’s CEO, also commented on the company’s growth: “The relative ease at which we are beating our growth forecasts is proof that we have established a very successful and efficient business banking platform. Small businesses clearly like the service that we are providing them with,” he said.

Aldemore is especially pleased with the win due to the fact that the nomination was made by brokers. Mr Lankey said: “Our formula for success has been to deliver what we’ve always promised from the outset: simple products supported by an easy to understand process; the ability to develop tailored solutions for clients rather than simply saying ‘no’ if cases don’t immediately fit; short lines of communications which include giving brokers access to expertise (even if it’s out of hours and late into the evening) and, perhaps most importantly, fast decisions.”

He added: “Feedback from brokers has ben excellent and they seem to genuinely appreciate that they can access everything they need under one roof at Aldemore.”

Looking to the future, Aldemore hopes to continue its success. “Being voted the Best Commercial Lender twice in a row was fantastic, but it’s our intention to make our service even better during 2011.

“We’re currently midway through the implementation of a major systems upgrade project, which should go live later this year and which I firmly believe will enable us to open up our lead even further,” he said.

Article contributed by Bridging and Commercial

The Complete Banker distils and encapsulates the best of Chris’s extensive expert commentary and research reports.  Covering key themes in retail, commercial and investment banking and the way they are being changed by economics, politics, technology and society, the books tackle serious subjects head-on, but in a very user-friendly way, seasoned by Chris’s unmistakeable viewpoint and voice, proving that it’s possible to be  informed and entertained at the same time. If you want to understand the business of banking better, or if you just want to get to grips with a specific aspect of it, then the Complete Banker series gives a neat and compact analysis of each key area of banking you may want to consider.

Money for Nothing and your Cheques for Free – How banks process payments, from small transactions on your mobile to billion-dollar international transfers

If you think that money is important (and who doesn’t), then so is the ability to process money – in other words, payments. And that’s what this book is all about: from processing payments over the internet and on your mobile telephone; to payments via cards, cash and cheques; to massive international payments operations and the challenges faced by banks in these areas, including the continual vigilance needed to avoid money launderers and terrorists.

Socialising the Antisocial Bank – Converting the antisocial bank by digitally connecting with customers to become part of their community

Most banks are anti-social. They don’t engage with customers to ‘delight’ or ‘exceed their expectations’, mainly because customers don’t expect anything different. That doesn’t mean it cannot change. The social media revolution is rapidly turning this planet on its head. So, if you want to work out how to be a social bank and connect with your targeted communities of customers, this is a short guide as to how to do it.

It’s Banking Jim, But Not As We Know It – Creating tomorrow’s bank by identifying the most critical strategic changes and trends in banking today

The future is uncertain.  However, if you could identify the most critical things likely to occur in the future today, then you could capitalise commercially upon the opportunities presented.  So that’s what this book is all about: what are the most critical things that will occur in banking tomorrow that, if you invest in them today, mean that you can make your fortune. A simple enough premise. So, if you want to work out how to the most successful bank you can be during the next decade, then this is the book for you.

Not Every Bank is Goldman Sachs – Tracking the rise of algorithmic machines and high frequency trading through a deregulated investment world

Are the investment banks a dangerously out of control threat to the global financial system, or do they bring innovation and liquidity to the market and alpha returns to their investors? Whichever your view, the investment world is changing and you need to know which are the key trends to track. This book reviews all of these areas and more. So, if you want to understand capital markets and investment banking and just why they get those big bonuses, this is a guide for you.

The Extraordinary Madness of Banks – Understanding the credit crisis, and the bankers, regulators and politicians involved

This is not a book about the financial crisis.  This book is about the outcome. It tracks the markets from the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed, and before with Northern Rock, through the reactions of policymakers, politicians, regulators and markets.  It shows where the weaknesses were in hindsight, and where the pitfalls may be in foresight.  It tries to give the reader a chance to absorb and understand the key movements that created the crisis, and the explanation of why banks, bonuses and bosses are still at the trough feeding and greeding their way through the issues faced.

Chris Skinner has been providing independent, expert commentary on the key developments in banking for over a decade in his role as Chief Executive of Balatro and Chairman of the Financial Services Club.  He is now perhaps best known for his daily blog at http://www.thefinanser.com/, and his writing for other media, such as The Banker magazine since 2004.  He is also a key commentator on banking for prime time news channels including the BBC, Sky and Bloomberg.

By Ann Tierney, Searching Finance  http://www.searchingfinance.co.uk/

Over the past year, the media has been full of terrible news about the availability of credit to most companies, especially SMEs. Many lenders, even relatively healthy ones, seemed to have tightened credit standards considerably.

This has often made life, already difficult in a weak economy, even more challenging for many companies. On this background, it is illuminating to look at the lending practices of Svenska Handelsbanken (also familiar to readers of the news because they just topped customer satisfaction polls.)

The common approach to lending is illustrated by the first graph which shows lending to corporate customers in the Eurozone. Most banks influence their lending decisions top down depending on their views on the economy and their outlook for loan losses. This can reduce the influence of the loan officer handling an individual case. The loan officer might have performed a thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of the prospective borrower. But in this system, a loan that would have been approved a year ago is now declined. This is illustrated by the chart: at the beginning, when the economy was still recovering from the dot com bubble, banks were still fairly strict in their lending standards. But as the economy started growing nicely and steadily from quarter to quarter (the blue line), lending standards (the green line) were relaxed more and more. The result: loans to corporate customers were growing faster and faster (the red line). The moment lenders see signs of a weakening economy, lending standards are reined in and loan volumes fall as a result. This approach seems rational only for five seconds because drastically cutting off lending exacerbates the economic contraction that lenders were afraid of in the first place. And this policy generally leaves banks with loans made on wafer thin margins in good times when quality can really only get worse, but they do not make loans on much better margins at the trough of the cycle when credit quality could arguably only get better.

Figure 1: Eurozone GDP growth (quarterly), lending to corporates and bank lending standards

Handelsbanken, by contrast, does not change its credit policy over time. It does not believe in GDP or other macro forecasts. It rather believes in sound credit analysis of an individual customer. Hence no need for the bank headquarters to tell the loan officer at the front line how to do his or her job. In addition, the bank believes in Warren Buffett’s insight that “it’s only when the tide goes out that you know who is swimming naked”. In other words: during good times both good and bad credits look similar, but in tough conditions like today’s it is fairly easy to spot the good customers you want to continue lending to. Handelsbanken’s bankers have a much more satisfying and intelligent job where they can use their expertise and judgement to come up with their own best credit decision.

As a result of this policy, Handelsbanken’s lending to corporates is highly counter-cyclical. When everyone else is competing to lend, Handelsbanken’s market share drops, and when no loan is to be had from any other bank, Handelsbanken keeps lending happily and increases its market share again.

Does it work? By following this very simple and common sense approach, Handelsbanken has achieved a twin goal of having higher margins than their competitors AND loan losses that are consistently about 50% lower. The bank follows the same approach with the same results in other countries such as the UK. The loyalty to their customers even in bad times may be one of the reasons behind their stellar customer satisfaction.

Unsurprisingly, many other banks are looking at the Handelsbanken model today. Experienced loan officers should be in for a bright future.

Figure 2: Sweden, lending to corporates

Article contributed by Niels Kroner, author of ‘A Blueprint for Better Banking‘

Article cover image copyright: Flickr