A Conversation With With Ylva Oertengren, COO At Simply Asset Finance On Supporting SMEs’ Lending Needs

Tell us about Simply

Founded in April 2017, we are a specialist business lending provider supporting small- to medium-sized businesses with tailored finance for their complex lending needs. By combining flexible technology and first-rate personal communication, we are bringing together the old and new worlds of finance to give our SME customers the best service possible.

Elsewhere, we have built out partnerships with funders to lend money on an as-a-service basis, utilising our platform to enable more SMEs to access funds, and lenders to reach more customers. To date, Simply has lent more than £1.75bn to over 11,000 small and medium sized businesses working across the UK in a wide range of sectors including transport, construction, manufacturing, recycling, and agriculture. We are playing a key role in financing innovation and growth across the UK.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

Small- to-medium-sized businesses are the backbone of the UK economy, yet many lack access to the funding they need to scale quickly. Whether due to risk criteria, slow decision-making, or fragmented processes, too many SMEs still struggle to access the capital they need, when they need it.

We wanted to help solve these problems, so eight years ago we set out with a blank sheet of paper to create a blueprint of what a good lender looks like, and how it could meet the evolving needs of modern businesses. This meant ensuring we were not only nimble and built upon the best technology, but that we also had a team consisting of the right people, with the right experience, who shared our passion for being there for our customers and helping them find the most appropriate funding solutions. This is why we look beyond a balance sheet and credit rating, but also consider a customer’s business potential; working with them to understand their business intimately and implement the best solution to help them succeed.

Tell us about your core product or service: Simply Connect

Simply Connect is a software-as-a-service platform that puts funding within reach for SMEs, brokers and strategic partners alike. It allows customers to access finance quickly and securely, with end-to-end functionality that handles everything from credit checks and applications to underwriting, approval, documentation, and drawdown.

Simply Connect embodies Simply’s “technology with a handshake” ethos, combining automation and artificial intelligence with Simply’s on-the-ground expertise. Whether accessed directly, via a broker, or embedded into a partner’s workflow, the platform offers a flexible experience that adapts to different business models.

It helps SMEs navigate a complicated and often disjointed finance landscape. The platform removes unnecessary paperwork and enables faster, more tailored lending which allows businesses to spend less time applying for funding and more time growing.

What most excites you about the SME lending industry?

The fact that everyday we can see the visible impact our work has on the businesses we support. For us, it’s not just about the money – it’s about enabling entrepreneurs, and real people, to realise their dreams and ideas. The businesses we work with aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet, they’re family businesses that have been building our houses, roads and schools for decades. They’re the pillars of our communities creating jobs, and opportunities for people nationwide. The best part for us is that we get to be part of enabling this growth that is delivering real change, and seeing the different journeys of our customers’ businesses over the years.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?

Thanks to the hard work of our teams, we’ve managed to achieve some amazing milestones over the past year; £1.75bn loan origination nationwide, as well as £50m origination in Liverpool and £150m lending delivered in Scotland which also saw us open a new office in Glasgow to support our expansion.

That scale hasn’t been without our fair share of challenges however; a global pandemic that brought UK business activity to a standstill, eyewatering inflation and interest rates, as well as a tumultuous political and economic environment.

But throughout it all, our biggest challenge was never any of these external factors – our doors remained open to supporting businesses with funding come rain or shine. The real test has been internal: working hard to ensure that our growth and scale never get in the way of our core mission. For us, that means getting things done quickly, staying close to our customers, continuously innovating, and having fun along the way. At Simply, the customer is and will always be the most important thing, and we’re dedicated to making sure our success only strengthens that commitment.

What is your number one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Remember that everyone has a unique path, and you don’t need to walk it alone. What has been essential for me is being part of a brilliant team of people who are experts in their domain. Building a finance business is complex and impossible to do on your own. The people I work with are not only driven and innovative, but are also very experienced and very knowledgeable. The collective strength of the Simply team is what has allowed me, and the rest of the business, to face the many hurdles we’ve experienced along the way and build a successful business.

What can we hope to see from Simply in the future?

A key pillar of our growth strategy is innovation – streamlining systems, optimising scalability, and pushing the boundaries of interconnectivity. We envisage the transformative impact of Simply Connect will continue to spread, with new white-label rollouts now able to be deployed in a matter of weeks.

We are also set to launch a decisioning system that will radically improve the speed and ease at which customers are able to draw down funding according to their individual timing needs.

Working in tandem with our people, Kara – our new AI-enabled assistant – will also continue to help shape and secure the future of our and our customers’ businesses, bringing our collective expertise to them at the press of a button.