Many ASHS members will know Jack Bithell, who runs Bithell Asset Finance Solutions with his wife, from an office in Dumfriesshire.
We’re asset finance brokers – that means that we act as middlemen between businesses needing loans and funders who have money to lend. But we’re not just middlemen, we get to know our borrowers requirements and what they want to do and discuss the best way for them to achieve their aims.
We have a carefully selected set of funders who each have different strategies and approaches to risk and we match up the best funders for each project. We specialise although not exclusively within the forestry and arboricultutral sector and know a lot of the suppliers across the industries. Knowing what the equipment can do for our customers is really important to us. We often finance private sales of equipment between two businesses.
So we’re different from other lenders such as banks who may be a bit more impersonal these days, have strict criteria and may not always be the cheapest option. It can be difficult to have your needs prioritised because they deal with thousands of loans to all sorts of different businesses. Our ethos is customer centric.
I’ve been in finance since 2004. At first I worked for a large retail bank specialising in mortgages and then as a mortgage broker. We set up BAFS in 2014 because we thought there was a genuine need for an alternative.
We have a good customer base and we get to know our customers. I don’t spend all my time sitting behind a desk – I spend a fair bit of time visiting customers and learning about their businesses, at exhibitions and demonstrations and the likes. Some of my family are involved in forestry, so I already knew a bit about the industry and the equipment used, and sometimes I get the chance to use some of the kit myself. It’s good to be able to help people do what they want to do, with bespoke packages of funding.
Most customers have a pretty realistic understanding about what they can afford and what a piece of kit can do, which helps with business planning. Our panel of funders are intentionally quite diverse, and have different approaches to risk or the types of businesses they’re interested in funding, so we can usually find a funder for a viable project.
When we are working with a customer on a funding application, we get to know their business as well as the project proposal. Sometimes businesses find better ways to get the results that they wanted from the project. In some cases, they discover other things about their business that could help improve its efficiency. We want to help them to grow their businesses and our job is to help them find the best way to do that, as well as to find funding to enable it to happen. One of the most useful things we’ve found is adjusting payment schedules so that they pay less in a quiet season and more at times of the year when they are busier and have more income to pay back loans.
We arrange loans for all sorts of things, including milling equipment, general farm/forestry machinery, dust extraction, commercial vehicles and buildings. The list really is endless. We deal with all sorts of businesses, from tree nurseries, through planting, management, contracting, harvesting, milling and processing to manufacturing and woodworking so quite literally throughout the whole process. There are no limits on the value of the equipment/loans we can facilitate. Whether you are a well established business, or just getting up and running we value your custom and are ready and able to help.
We have a lot of satisfied customers and get most of our business from customers’ and suppliers’ recommendations, something we consider the biggest compliment someone can make.
Looking back to our decisions and reasons for starting in 2014, I am really pleased with how the last 6 years have gone. It’s a genuinely satisfying vocation where you really get to help people to take their businesses on to another level. I wouldn’t change a thing.
