rebuildingsociety.com on why the North needs finance rooted outside the capital
Years after the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ agenda first promised to close the regional investment gap, research continues to show business finance concentrated disproportionately in London and the South East. In our experience as a Leeds-based lender, finance providers based outside the capital have a particular part to play in closing that gap.
Analysis of UK business finance has repeatedly found equity and alternative finance concentrated in London relative to the rest of the country, with regions including Yorkshire and Lincolnshire receiving a smaller share of investment than the quality and volume of local businesses would suggest. Government-backed vehicles such as the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund were established partly to address this imbalance, and have deployed meaningful sums into Yorkshire businesses, but the underlying gap has proved persistent.
“This gap has been documented for years, and initiatives like the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund exist because it’s real. We’re a small part of the picture, but we’ve always thought it mattered that a Yorkshire business could raise finance from a lender that’s actually based here too, not just headquartered two hundred miles away.”
Daniel Rajkumar, founder & CEO, rebuildingsociety.com said: rebuildingsociety.com has been headquartered in Leeds since 2012, with lending decisions made by people based in the region and a network of local introducers, including accountants and brokers, across Yorkshire and beyond. In our experience, being based outside London isn’t incidental: a lender with no presence in a region can lack the local business context, and the local investor base, that a business elsewhere in the country might benefit from.
We’re not a substitute for the scale of capital that equity investment or government-backed regional funds provide, but as one finance option genuinely rooted outside the capital, we want Yorkshire and northern businesses to know finance doesn’t have to mean a conversation with someone in London.
“We’re not going to close a regional investment gap on our own, nobody thinks that. But we’d like more northern business owners to know that finance rooted outside London exists, and to at least have that conversation before assuming the only options sit in the capital.”