Welcome to the SME Funding Awards 2021. This is our first-year launch of the awards and we want to celebrate the very best of the SME funding world.
2021 seems to be a suitable year to launch the SME Funding Awards. The past year has been incomparably tough for all businesses, and SMEs have had to adapt and show resilience to the trials and lockdowns that the last year has thrown. Funding supand funding support has never been so crucial.
We want these awards to be a chance to recognise the lenders who have been going the extra mile to support SMEs over the last year. We have consequently created 6 award categories:
Lender of the Year
CBILS Lender of the Year
Asset Finance Lender of the Year
Invoice Finance Lender of the Year
Unsecured Loan Lender of the Year
Secured Loan Lender of the Year
The nominees within each category have been nominated by people within the industry and some clients who wanted to reflect on how lenders specifically helped them. Over the next month, we will be putting together some interesting content on each nominee to learn a little bit more about how they have been helping SMEs this past year. These profiles will then help our panel of judges decide the SME Funding Awards 2021 winners!
Our panel includes Robert Johns, Helene Panzarino, and Tesh Srivastava, each of who were selected based on their experience within the financial and entrepreneurial sector. Each panelist has a close affinity with the progression of UK SMEs.
Robert Johns, a chartered accountant who has worked at the UK’s largest accountancy and consultancy firms, has a passion for SMEs and has provided financial and operational advice to growing businesses that has helped them streamline their operations to turn into cash profits.
Helene Panzarino has an industry focus on alternative finance for SMEs and digital banking solutions. She is the creator of the Rainmaking Colab FinTech Programme for Series A+ FinTechs and is the lead on the Imperial College FinTech Executive Education Programme.
Tesh Srivastava, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Wathe which offers SMEs with free business and data analytics tools and access to accessibly business finance. He is passionate about SME tools and SME finance and enabling both lenders and SMEs to work together.
To find out more about each of our panelists read more here. The winners for each category will be announced in May- watch this space!
In the meantime please familiarise yourself with all our nominees on our SME Funding Awards 2021 webpage. Find it here.
Congratulations and Good Luck to all our nominees!
