For all the innovation in recent years, business finance still comes in neat, pre-labelled boxes – invoice finance, asset finance, term loans, and overdrafts. If your business fits one of those boxes, well, that’s great – there are deals to be done and lenders to talk to. But what happens when if it doesn’t?
That’s where structured finance comes in. It’s not a product in itself – it’s more of a mindset. A way of looking at a business not through a bank’s lens of security and track record, but through the real-world lens of how it operates, where the money moves, and what’s needed to keep things going. It’s not new, and it’s not complicated, but it is, in our view, one of the most overlooked and underappreciated tools in the SME finance world.
Structured finance is what happens when you stop trying to force a business into a single solution and start building one around it instead. That might mean weaving together multiple funding types – a term loan here, some revolving credit there, maybe a bit of invoice finance to release cash from slow-paying customers. It’s a modular approach, and like most modular things, it works best when it’s designed by someone who understands the full picture.
We often meet businesses that have found themselves backed into a corner by rigid lending rules. Maybe they’ve got strong forward orders, but cash is tied up in stock. Maybe they’re growing quickly but can’t invest in equipment without raiding their own reserves. Or maybe they’ve just been turned down by their bank for the third time and are starting to believe the problem lies with them, not the system.
The truth is that the system doesn’t always serve growing businesses well – especially those with lumpy income, seasonal spikes, or big swings in working capital. Structured finance offers a more flexible, practical route -it allows funding to follow the flow of the business, not the other way round. That might mean aligning repayments with project milestones, or it might mean creating a facility that grows as your sales do. Or simply finding a way to refinance what you’ve got and make it work harder.
More than a funding fix
But it’s not just about access to capital – it’s about doing more with it. Structured finance can help stabilise a business, give it breathing room, or unlock growth that’s currently stuck behind one unhelpful financial bottleneck. And crucially, it doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right advice, the right lender, and a bit of joined-up thinking, it’s often no more difficult to arrange than a straightforward loan.
At Able, we don’t pretend to have all the answers. But we do ask the right questions. We look beyond the numbers, get under the skin of the business, and then build a funding solution that supports the actual story – not just the spreadsheet version. Sometimes that means layering together three or four different products. Sometimes it’s just about reframing the challenge in a way a lender can understand. Either way, it’s about moving forward and making sure your finance supports the business you’re running, not just the one you used to be.
We think structured finance deserves a better profile – it’s not a last resort, it’s a smart, tailored way of making finance work harder. For many of the businesses we talk to, it’s the missing piece that helps everything else click into place.
If that sounds familiar, or you want to know more, let’s talk.
