1. Does the Green Growth Platform need to be Funding Platform?
11/18/2017 9:48 AM
Does the Green Growth Platform need to be Funding Platform?
Green Growth Conference 2017
Business Funding Workshop
Mark Hadley – Isis Environmental Limited
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2. Difficulties with Grants
GGP currently monitors grants for Innovation, R&D, Business Growth & Renewables
By far the vast majority of these require ‘Match Funding’ typically offering 40% grant
Fine for businesses with established cashflow & retained profits, but hopeless for start-ups and young lean businesses
This is a common issue faced by SME’s in developing their business growth plans
Q. Can we develop a comprehensive funding route map, incorporating resource providers?

3. Difficulties in raising funding
Access to finance is important for growth and productivity
Debt financing gap for businesses lacking track record & collateral
Equity Gap for high growth potential SMEs
SMEs may not fully understand benefits of raising finance or likelihood of success, which ultimately means they do not apply for finance.
Businesses sometimes lack experience and expertise to raise finance

4. The Conventional Finance Escalator

5. The Brave New World
Many SME’s and MicroBiz have turned to crowdfunding to raise seed finance or launch new products
ZOPA the world’s 1st P2P lender has raised £1.8b since 2005, and £700m last year alone
ZOPA was not accepting new investment as lack of demand by end December 2016
Maybe not enough creditworthy Co’s to satisfy the lending requirements of the new platforms
FCA is in process of granting authorisation to P2P lenders at present

6. Crowdfunders & P2P lenders
In 2015, approximately 20,000 SMEs raised alternative
finance through online channels
Receiving £2.2 billion in business funding, equivalent of 13.9% of new bank loans

7. Why is loan demand falling?
Entrepreneurs often resistant to outside intervention in their businesses and were against the idea of borrowing, even to fund growth.
One of the main factors behind this reluctance was the fear of banks or other lenders having too much control over their business, such as having the ability to alter or re-negotiate lending conditions.

8. Can you help us?
I have devised a simple game we can all play here today
If you have a smartphone please use your browser to find Kahoot.it and we’ll play a game
You will need to enter the Kahoot number in a minute into your phone and give yourself a nickname
We are going to try and capture some information, the scores are anonymous BTW
I’ll hopefully download the results later for the GGP and we’ll discuss the findings afterwards