EU Referendum – What Does it Mean for Alternative Capital Providers?

The UK referendum has caused uncertainty in the financial services industry, but what does it mean for alternative capital providers? And could it create some business opportunities?

Alternative capital providers are unregulated, or at least non-bank, financial institutions. Alternative finance embraces lenders from the smallest participants in peer-to-peer platforms to multibillion dollar global alternative lending funds. They cover product areas such as leveraged finance, real estate finance, factoring, leasing, consumer lending and trade finance.

The referendum has two key consequences for the alternative finance industry.

The first is economic. Alternative lenders are not funded by deposits, central banks or short-term wholesale funding tools such as commercial paper or the overnight repo market. As a result, they need higher returns and tend to operate where banks cannot. Financial stress in the short-term funding markets could cause banks to stop or delay