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North West’s flourishing start-ups need support from their bank, says regional NatWest boss

A record number of startups are flourishing in the North West and they’re hungry for support from their bank, says Peter Richardson regional director of business banking for NatWest.

Peter heads up NatWest’s team across the region and says he is keen to get the bank back to grass roots - helping businesses to navigate the complexities of that startup period. He’s particularly taken with the number of young North Westerners who are opting to start business in the face of a challenging graduate job market.

“We’re heavily involved in mentoring. Upcoming workshops will identify high-growth startups - these are the people who have lots of connexions and have been involved in the sector for years, but probably never run their own business. We know they will be successful,” explains Peter.

“It means spending at least one day every month in these business. Not as bankers, but as people who can act as a sounding board with years of experience behind them.”

In addition to mentoring activities, the bank also operate peer-to-peer advice groups where they pair regional businesses facing similar challenges to discuss their methods and experience.

Many businesses have a greater need for advice than finance, and Peter is keen to make sure the bank educate their customers on this.

He explains that NatWest have changed their structure to free up the bank’s business managers from day-to-day admin and make them more available to businesses. Local “hubs” house three business manager who are uniquely placed to understand the locality and its economy.

Peter suggests the burgeoning digital sector in the region, spurred by the arrival of media city, has created challenges for banks to learn the nuances and complexities of “new industries.”

The bank has had to quickly form a thorough understanding of how funding can benefit the sector. Similarly, the re-emergence of manufacturing in the region has prompted the question of how funding can help the upskilling the sector is so hungry for.

So what are North West businesses looking for from their bank? For existing businesses it is about financing their premises and cashflow, explains Peter.

He adds: “We want to make sure we’re not just looking at loans and overdrafts for regional businesses. If you’ve got a rapidly growing company - invoice finance should no longer be a dirty word. Also asset finance, linked to the annual investment allowance, is a useful tool too.

“We need to look at the best structure of finance. We don’t just want the business with us in 12 months time, we want them to be with us in ten years time - making sure they grow.”

Not all funding of businesses is direct from the bank. NatWest have played their part in helping the region’s companies to draw down public funds too.

Peter continues: “We’re working with the public sector to see how businesses can draw on public funds if we can’t agree on a deal with them, or if the customer hasn’t got quite enough to work with.

“This might be the Regional Growth Fund or it might be European funding. As an example in Manchester, the LEP has attracted RGF money that we supported. That’s lending that we couldn’t have done by ourselves.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .