How Venture Finance Management upped their game in helping clients access funding

With more clients needing funding, this accountant realised that “good enough” was no longer good enough

When others ask for help our first instinct is to do what we can. So when his clients reached out for advice on funding, Oliver Cooke, Co-Founder and Finance Business Partner at Venture Finance Management worried that he wasn’t doing his best for them.

“In honesty, the only time we’d talk about funding with clients is when they had a funding issue or wanted to fund a new fleet of vans or get a term loan. The advice we gave back was just getting two or three quotes and seeing whose the best quote was. So our offering before Swoop wasn’t great.”

Venture Finance Management looks after between 60 and 70 limited companies; with costs rising and increasing uncertainty, more and more clients began asking for help with their funding issues.

Oliver quickly saw that “good enough” was no longer good enough. Fortunately, he found out about an opportunity to partner with Swoop – and Oliver says he hasn’t looked back:

“The best part of partnering with Swoop is the ability to broaden our offering. We’ve mostly done borrowing but we can now offer grants and equity as well.”

Oliver cites products such as VAT finance which allows clients to spread the quarterly VAT bill into more manageable monthly payments and term loans which give clients a cash boost to help them achieve their growth plans.

As well as finding the right funding for his clients, Oliver says that Venture’s partnership with Swoop has helped to build relationships with clients as well.

“Now that Swoop has helped us get on top of funding, we are able to open up more conversations because clients know we work with funders now. At Venture, we try to sell additional services such management packs, board packs and cashflow reporting. A lot of clients don’t think they need that until they actually do, so they won’t have it in place until they need funding or they’re trying to give away equity or they’re trying to sell the company. When that happens, funders will want the last two sets of accounts and the last six months of management reports. When clients say we don’t get these, that’s a good moment for us to step in and explain the reasons why they should get management reports.”

Oliver also appreciates that Swoop has built an educational platform to help them discuss funding for clients with more confidence and from a place of expert knowledge.

“Our understanding of the funding landscape before Swoop for Advisors was very basic. Now the educational platform allows us to have an initial conversation, knowing what the clients will need in place for funding their plans. It’s not just for deals right now, we’re able to get things in place for plans that are two or three years into the future.”

Oliver says that the difference Swoop has made to his business has been huge:

“Swoop saves time, because the whole process is now streamlined. If we have a funding enquiry, because we’ve done the process with different clients, we know exactly what we need already. With Swoop involved, you know that an expert is managing the process and of course, our clients get the funding they need quickly – which means they’re over the moon.”

Would Oliver recommend working with Swoop?

“Oh yeah. No hesitation. A no-brainer.”

Watch the full case study here.