Finance

Chinese lenders among top backers of “forest-risk” firms

Published

6 months ago

June 5, 2025

Chinese lenders among top backers of “forest-risk” firms

Recent data shows that Chinese banks have become the largest creditors to “forest-risk” companies, after major producing countries Brazil and Indonesia

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Key findings

Recent data shows that Chinese banks have become the largest creditors to “forest-risk”* companies, after major producing countries Brazil and Indonesia, with over $23 billion in financing provided from 2018 to 2024.
Key Chinese banks, including CITIC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China, are among the top creditors for “forest-risk” companies such as Royal Golden Eagle Group, which has faced repeated allegations that its supply chain has driven deforestation.
The increasing flow of finance to “forest-risk” companies undermines China’s climate and environmental goals under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration and national Green Finance Guidelines.
Meanwhile, Chinese banks rank poorly compared to their international counterparts in terms of deforestation-related policies, with four out of six major Chinese lenders scoring zero in the Forest 500 annual policy assessment.

Cattle grazing in Marabá, Pará State, one of the most deforested areas in Brazil — Cattle in Pará State of Brazil. 60% of tropical deforestation is linked to just three key products – beef, palm oil and soy. Fernanda Ligabue / Global Witness

Recommendations

Chinese banks and regulators must take stronger action to cut ties with deforestation-linked companies.
Chinese banks should publish and implement clear zero deforestation and human rights protection policies when financing “forest-risk” companies.
Banks should implement China’s 2022 Green Finance Guidelines by establishing due diligence processes to identify, monitor and screen out clients linked to deforestation.
Chinese banks should establish open communication channels to rapidly receive and address deforestation allegations from international community.
The Chinese banking regulator should strengthen green finance policies with clear requirements that banks cease financial support to companies with deforestation-linked supply chains.

Ranking global contributors to “forest-risk” finance: China’s rise to the top

Chinese banks became the largest creditors of “forest-risk” companies globally between 2018-2024 – excluding financial institutions based in Brazil and Indonesia – according to a new analysis by Global Witness, based on data released in September 2024 by the Forests & Finance coalition.

This marks a shift from Global Witness’s previous reporting on Chinese bank finance in 2021, which used Forests & Finance data from 2013-2020. During this period, Chinese banks were the fifth largest creditors globally of major companies producing and trading commodities at high risk of driving deforestation.

The Forests & Finance database, compiled by Dutch research firm Profundo, tracks financial flows to over 300 “forest-risk” companies involved in agricultural supply chains such as beef, palm oil and soy production – industries that are major drivers of tropical deforestation.

Profundo’s methodology, including how it defines “forest-risk” companies, is summarised below.

The financial sectors of Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia provide a disproportionate amount of “forest-risk” financing to commodity producers in their own countries and are excluded from this analysis, which focuses on international financial flows. When including these countries, China ranked third globally overall in 2023, the final year for which full data is available.

At COP26, countries like the US, France, the Netherlands and the UK pledged to end deforestation by 2030. However, private financial institutions based in those financial centres also remain some of the biggest supporters of “forest-risk” companies.

According to the data, between 2018-2024, Chinese banks provided a total of $23 billion in credit to “forest-risk” companies.

This figure for the seven-year period is higher than the figure provided in the seven-year period between 2014-2020 ($18 billion), indicating that the financial sector has failed to adjust lending practices to mitigate the damage some of these companies are wreaking upon global forests.

There are a handful of key Chinese banks among the top creditors providing “forest-risk” financing – CITIC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China were the top three creditors between 2018-2024, according to the data.

The two biggest “forest-risk” recipients of this Chinese bank lending are Sinochem and Royal Golden Eagle Group (RGE), despite both RGE and its subsidiaries facing repeated deforestation allegations.

COFCO, a major Chinese agricultural trader, is the third-largest recipient. Despite the company’s multiple commitments to address deforestation, in 2024 COFCO was alleged to have sourced soybeans from illegally leased Indigenous lands in Brazil.

Just one year prior, another investigation challenged whether COFCO had done enough to ensure its soy and palm oil supply chains were indeed deforestation-free.

In response COFCO claimed that it has not violated its own commitments, insisting that it takes numerous measures to monitor and enforce its supply chain standards.

It claimed the farmers tied to deforestation were indirect suppliers and said it was “working to increase traceability of indirect purchases, which will lead us to strengthen our controls and risk monitoring for this part of the supply chain.”

One noteworthy data highlight is that, in 2024, Chinese bank credit provision to global manufacturing conglomerate RGE spiked, despite data for 2024 only including deals made between January-July.

RGE’s sprawling network of “shadow companies” has faced multiple allegations of deforestation over the years in relation to its palm oil and pulp and paper supply chains.

RGE denies allegations of wrongdoing. In response to a July 2024 publication published by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), RGE claimed it was “local communities”, rather than one its subsidiary companies, who were responsible for clearing forests in its palm oil supply chain – despite allegedly providing no evidence to support this conclusion.

RGE has also denied links to deforesting companies in its pulp and paper supply chains, most recently in response to an October 2024 investigation from The Gecko Project and Bloomberg.

Orangutans at the Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, Indonesia in 2001, under protection from nearby deforestation — Orangutans in the protected Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Over the past two years, RGE has received a series of sustainability-linked loans (SLL) supported by a consortium of banks, including Chinese banks such as Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co, Ltd and Bank of Communications (Hong Kong) Ltd.

These “sustainable” loans allow RGE to borrow under more favourable conditions, providing it hits pre-determined “linked” environmental and social targets.

For example, the $1 billion 2024 SLL (provided to two “sustainable” palm oil producers in RGE’s network of subsidiaries Asian Agri and Apical) is tied to indicators of the companies’ compliance with “anti-deforestation commitments”, as well as to independent suppliers’ traceability verification.

However, the credibility of these “sustainable” deals was called into question in the above published by the Rainforest Action Network.

Why this matters: Chinese banks’ lack of robust deforestation policies

The rising influence of Chinese banks in “forest-risk” sectors is of particular concern given that Chinese banks persistently have some of the weakest deforestation policies in place compared with banks from other countries.

The lack of formal policy raises questions about whether and how the world’s top creditors to “forest-risk” agribusinesses are carrying out due diligence to ensure their investments do not drive deforestation.

One way of comparing the strength of banks’ policies on deforestation is via the Forest 500, prepared by Global Canopy, which ranks financial institutions based on an evaluation of their publicly available commitments to tackle deforestation and related human rights abuses, assessing factors such as if all commodities are included, as well as the transparency of their reporting against targets.

A staff member counts money at a branch of the Bank of China on August 10, 2011 in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province of China. — Key Chinese banks, including CITIC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China, are among the top creditors for “forest-risk” companies. VCG via Getty Images / Getty Images
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Four out of six major Chinese lenders (including CITIC, Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) assessed in Forest 500’s database have policy scores of zero. Just two Chinese banks score above zero: China Construction Bank scores three points and Agricultural Bank of China scores four points.

All the banks from China in this assessment also score zero points for their approach to human rights abuses associated with deforestation, apart from Agricultural Bank of China, which scores one point only.

By comparison, the overall highest scoring financial institution in Forest 500’s ranking is Schroders, which scores a total of 58.5 points, and has a policy to eliminate “forest-risk” commodity-driven deforestation from its portfolios by 2025.

According to Forest 500, a strong deforestation policy for a bank includes clear, time-bound commitments to eliminate deforestation and associated human rights abuses from its financing, applies to all high-risk commodities across all financial services, and includes robust implementation measures such as due diligence, monitoring and transparent reporting.

Global Witness approached Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and CITIC with an opportunity to comment on the report’s findings – including their financing activities and apparent lack of deforestation policies. None of the three banks responded to this request.

Recommendations: What should change

Chinese banks and their regulators must take their deforestation-risk portfolio seriously – the increasing financial support to the “forest-risk” companies shown by our analysis suggests a clear departure from China’s commitment and national policies.

The increasing flow of this funding, coupled with no national regulations to prevent it falling into the hands of deforesting companies, appears to contradict the commitments China has made on the international stage – such as those made under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration, signed by China and more than 140 nations at COP26, that commits to realigning financial flows with forest protection.

Crucially, supporting companies with a track-record of causing environmental and social harm is also at odds with China’s national policies, especially those designed to guide and leverage finance to support the green and low-carbon transition.

For example, in 2022, a major overarching policy called Green Finance Guidelines set out detailed expectations for banks and insurance companies to identify, monitor, prevent and control their environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks.

The guidelines made it clear that banks should “strictly restrict” granting credit to clients that face significant environmental and social violations and risks (article 20) and strengthen ESG risk management in their credit and investment granting for overseas Belt and Road projects (article 25).

In recent years, China has made efforts to decarbonise its economy and balance growth within planetary boundaries. In fact, the world is increasingly looking to China for leadership in climate and nature actions as the country explores new opportunities in the clean energy sectors.

Aerial view of rainforest being removed to make way for palm oil and rubber plantations — Rainforest being removed to make way for palm oil and rubber plantations. WhitcombeRD / Getty Images

Since the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has also introduced a series of policies aimed at greening or reducing risks associated with overseas investments.

Despite being one of the world’s largest markets for “forest-risk” commodities such as soy, beef and palm oil, China currently lacks a national policy prohibiting the import of commodities linked to deforestation.

However, China has made notable bilateral commitments with key forest country partners. For instance, in April 2023, China and Brazil pledged to collaborate on eliminating deforestation and illegal logging, while also enforcing laws to prevent illegal imports and exports.

Major Chinese food companies and traders are piloting “deforestation-free” shipments of commodities like soy, and efforts are underway to make Brazilian beef supply chains to China more traceable.

Global Witness’ analysis suggests that Chinese banks and their regulators can do much more to reverse the environmental and social harm caused by financing deforestation-linked companies, which undermines China’s international climate and nature goals.

Global Witness calls for:

Chinese banks should publish and implement clear zero deforestation and human rights protection policies when financing “forest-risk” companies.
Banks should implement China’s 2022 Green Finance Guidelines by establishing due diligence processes to identify, monitor and screen out clients linked to deforestation.
Chinese banks should establish open communication channels to rapidly receive and address deforestation allegations from international community.
The Chinese banking regulator should strengthen green finance policies with clear requirements that banks cease financial support to companies with deforestation-linked supply chains.

Methodology

The Forests & Finance coalition dataset, produced by Profundo and analysed by Global Witness, identifies financial transactions with more than 300 company groups that are involved in the upstream segment of the beef, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber, soy and timber supply chains in Southeast Asia, Central and West Africa and South America, collectively referred to as “tropical forest-risk sectors” as they drive most deforestation.

Profundo notes that this selection of “forest-risk companies” is “intended to be a representative sample of companies most impacting tropical forests … Factors that led to their selection include the size of the company and land area of operation, access to information on their financing, and known negative impacts of their operations on tropical forests.”

Profundo’s data is compiled from Bloomberg, Refinitiv, Orbis and other sources, along with company reports.

The dataset captures six types of asset class and transaction, split into investments (2024; bondholding and shareholding), and credit (2010-2024; revolving credit facilities; loan issuance; bond issuance and share issuance).

Profundo applied “segment adjusters” to each company to estimate how much of a given portion of total finance could reasonably be expected to have financed the production or trade of a “forest-risk” commodity.

That means, for example, that finance provided by a Chinese financial institution to the US branch of a global conglomerate company is discounted, meaning all financing in this dataset are Profundo’s estimates of funding allocated towards commodity production in regions where deforestation occurs.

Read more information on Profundo’s methodology.

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Finance

The Boring Revolution: How Trust and Compliance Are Taking Over Digital Finance – FinTech Weekly

Published

10 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

The Boring Revolution: How Trust and Compliance Are Taking Over Digital Finance – FinTech Weekly

In digital finance, trust and compliance are becoming the true drivers of scale. An op-ed by Brickken CEO Edwin Mata examines why regulation is shaping the sector’s next phase.

Edwin Mata is CEO & Co-Founder of Brickken.

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Read by executives at JP Morgan, Coinbase, Blackrock, Klarna and more

In digital finance, we love noise. New apps, tokens, and “disruptive” models get all the airtime. Yet, the real inflection point is unfolding in the most unglamorous corner of the industry: compliance, governance, and record-keeping.

Regulation is not the backdrop to innovation. It is the mechanism through which the sector becomes investable, scalable and credible. Today’s inflection point is defined not by a new consumer product but by whether digital assets can meet the governance expectations that global finance takes for granted.

Regulation as the Moment of Maturity

Traditional finance learned this a long time ago. Modern capital markets only became investable at scale after securities laws in the 1930s forced transparency, continuous disclosure, and enforcement, restoring confidence after catastrophic failures. The US Securities Exchange Act of 1934 didn’t kill markets; it gave them the legal scaffolding to grow into the backbone of global savings.

Crypto and digital assets are now entering a similar “boringly serious” phase. In the EU, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, or MiCA, is designed to give legal clarity to crypto-asset issuers and service providers. For institutional compliance teams, that kind of predictability is far more important than whichever buzzword happens to dominate a conference stage.

The impact on capital flows is already visible: 83% of institutional investors plan to increase allocations to digital assets with regulatory clarity as a key driver of that enthusiasm. Clear rules don’t strangle innovation, they compress uncertainty and lower the risk premium that has kept cautious money on the sidelines.

The Boring Revolution Behind Institutional Capital

That’s why the real story in digital finance is a “boring revolution.” The work that actually matters now is the industrialisation of KYC and KYB, AML monitoring, standardized reporting, on-chain and off-chain reconciliation, governance workflows, and provable rights attached to digital instruments. The industry still loves to obsess over the next shiny app, but the real bottleneck is whether institutions can trust the rails beneath the interface.

RegTech has quietly reframed compliance tooling as an edge rather than a punishment. Technology-driven compliance improves risk assessment, fraud detection, and overall competitiveness because it lets institutions scale digital finance without losing sight of their exposure. That is where the durable upside sits, in making digital assets behave like a serious asset class, not a speculative game with good branding.

From the vantage point of building tokenization infrastructure, the pattern is consistent. When institutions evaluate real-world-asset tokenization, they don’t begin by asking which chain you use or how “decentralized” it is. Their focus is not the chain. It is whether ownership, entitlements, corporate actions and governance can be evidenced, enforced and audited in ways that align with securities law and accounting standards. If those foundations are sound, the rest of the architecture becomes negotiable.

You can see the same shift in where venture money is going. Over 70% of digital asset investment now targets institutional and infrastructure-focused platforms, up from just 27% a decade ago; the funding narrative has pivoted away from consumer speculation toward institutional plumbing.

That is not a romantic story, but it is the kind that tends to survive more than one market cycle.

From Flashy Apps to Trustworthy Systems

Banks and large asset managers are adjusting their priorities accordingly. Governance, risk management, and compliance modernisation are stressed as core investment themes, especially as new digital-asset rules and prudential standards come into force. Digital finance is being pulled into the centre of regulated balance sheets and internal control frameworks.

At the same time, some institutions now describe digital assets, including tokenized bonds and money-market funds, as a “mainstream subject” for their clients. We explicitly link the shift from fringe to mainstream to better regulatory frameworks and institutional-grade infrastructure rather than retail hype. The catalyst is not design; it is the underlying certainty that these instruments carry governance, accounting treatment and supervisory oversight consistent with established financial products.

This is the narrative inversion digital finance still struggles with. For a decade, the space behaved as if UX, community and tokenomics could overpower everything else. That era produced experimentation, but also a long tail of ungoverned projects that institutional capital simply cannot touch.

If digital finance wants to sit alongside public equities, investment-grade debt and regulated funds, the front end has to be the last question. What matters is whether the system can prove who owns what, under which rules, and with what recourse when things go wrong. That’s the baseline requirement for anyone managing real risk.

Compliance as Product, Not Overhead

The opportunity for fintech founders now is to treat compliance engineering, data governance and risk architecture as core product. The firms that take regulatory expectations seriously, encode them into workflows, and expose them as reliable platforms will become the quiet chokepoints of the next cycle. Regulated entities won’t integrate ten different “innovative” front ends if each one creates a new audit headache; they will integrate the boring rails that make their auditors and supervisors more comfortable, not less.

Collaboration with regulators is becoming central to this shift. Around the world, supervisory authorities are establishing innovation pathways, industry working groups and controlled testing environments that allow technical design and regulatory expectations to evolve together. This model may disappoint purists who prefer unbounded experimentation, but it is the only credible way to align programmable financial systems with the governance, risk and reporting obligations of real-world finance.

The irony is that the least glamorous corner of digital finance is where the most durable value will be created. The “boring revolution” is the recognition that trust, compliance and governance are not obstacles to innovation but the substrate on which the next generation of financial systems will quietly compound.

Finance

Santa Barbara Unified School Board Shakes Up Finance Committee Amid Annual Budget Report

Published

22 hours ago

December 15, 2025

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Santa Barbara Unified School Board Shakes Up Finance Committee Amid Annual Budget Report

As the Santa Barbara Unified school board faces a projected $20 million deficit and declining reserves, trustees voted unanimously Thursday night to change who leads the district’s Finance Committee — removing community member Todd Voigt in favor of future boardmember leadership.

The move — approved in Resolution 2024-25-32A — immediately drew criticism from parents, primarily on the Facebook page S.B. Parent Leadership Action Network (S.B. PLAN), who accused the board of consolidating power just as the district’s fiscal outlook grows increasingly precarious.

“This is a power grab,” said Michele Voigt, wife of Todd Voigt and a San Marcos parent who spoke during public comment. “We are at a point of serious financial concern, and the board is reducing independent oversight.”

Voigt urged the board to view the First Interim Budget Report as more than numbers on a slide. “I’m asking you tonight to look at this first interim not as a technical report, but a test of your governance and your duty to the community you represent,” she said. “Your own projections point to reserves falling below the state minimum and trending toward zero within a few years. And no one will be able to say that they didn’t see it coming.”

Despite Voigt’s comments, the district’s interim financial report told a more nuanced story. The district’s chief business official, Conrad Tedeschi, iterated different figures, figures that were part of the long-term financial plan approved by the board. Overall the numbers were not a surprise, emphasizing that the district is not in crisis and remains above the state-mandated 3 percent minimum reserve level.

According to Tedeschi, there are improved revenue projections and a growing deficit. Total revenue for 2024-25 increased to $244 million, up from the adopted budget, driven by higher-than-expected one-time grants, including a major boost to the Expanded Learning Opportunity Program, which rose from a projected $3 million to $5.2 million after the state updated its formula. However, expenditures also climbed, pushing the projected deficit from $15 million to $20 million. Tedeschi said the increase reflects rising labor costs following the district’s recent wage settlement with teachers. Salaries and benefits now account for 81 percent of all district spending.

Despite the shortfall, Tedeschi emphasized that reserves remain above target: currently at 8.52 percent, compared to the board’s adopted budget of 8.92 percent and well above the state-required 3 percent minimum. Multi-year projections show that with planned reductions, the deficit could shrink to $6.7 million by 2027-28, provided the district makes at least $6 million in cuts over the next two years to maintain a minimum 5 percent reserve. “That’s not a satisfactory level for a basic aid district,” Tedeschi said, “but staying above 5 percent is the minimum needed to keep our budget certified.”

Still, there was ongoing tension over who chairs the Finance Committee — centering on concerns about transparency and legal compliance. The board’s newly passed resolution requires that only elected trustees can serve as committee chair, replacing community member Todd Voigt with a boardmember moving forward.

At the heart of the move is compliance with the Brown Act, California’s open-meeting law that governs transparency in public agencies. Under the law, committees subject to the Brown Act must have properly agendized items for any votes or actions to be legal and binding. Board President William Banning said the Finance Committee had previously taken action on items not properly listed on agendas, potentially violating the law and opening the district to liability.

“These amendments reinforce that commitment [to compliance] and position the Finance Committee to continue its work in a way that is focused, lawful, collaborative, and ultimately highly valuable to the board and the community we serve,” Banning said.

The amended resolution changes Finance Committee bylaws to require that only a boardmember may serve as chair, ending Voigt’s tenure. It also outlines procedures for member removal and reaffirms the committee’s advisory-only role.

“I am the Chair of the Finance Committee, maybe for 15 more minutes,” said Todd Voigt during public comment. “I agreed to serve because I care deeply about this community and its future. I’m a volunteer with no political ambitions. My sole purpose is to provide sound advice and expertise for the benefit of our schools.”

Voigt called the resolution a “serious mistake” and warned that removing the independent chair would erode the very trust the district had been trying to rebuild. “If the board controls both the committee and its leadership, that independence disappears,” he said.

He also made a pointed recommendation to the board. “Should this passage occur … I strongly urge the board to select Boardmember [Celeste] Kafri as the chairperson. She has consistently demonstrated a commitment to addressing the district’s financial challenges,” Voigt said. “By contrast… Boardmember Banning opposed a committee goal I proposed to reduce the deficit. Leadership that does not prioritize deficit reduction is unacceptable.”

Board President William Banning, who was formally elected to the role earlier in the evening, defended the resolution and its timing.

“This is a normal part of building effective governance structures,” he said. “The resolution … strengthens Brown Act compliance … clarifies the committee’s strictly advisory role … and ensures that meetings are presided over by a trustee trained in Open Meeting Law and accountable to the public.”

Banning said that while the original intent was to demonstrate openness by appointing a community chair, it had created confusion around agenda-setting and governance boundaries. “That pattern typically follows the line of … a community member is chair in an attempt to demonstrate openness and shared leadership … and then in early meeting experiences, there is agenda-setting confusion, there’s boundary drift, and difficulties with Brown Act procedures.”

Boardmember Kafri pushed back on parts of the resolution, questioning why the committee chair needed to be replaced at all. “Why is it that we need to replace the committee head … because of a misunderstanding about the Brown Act when most of the committee members have never been on a Brown Act committee before?” she asked. “Could an orientation and a better understanding … prevent future Brown Act violations?”

That prompted clarification from Banning: “It is not only common, but standard practice throughout the state of California … that the committee chair be one of the appointed board representatives.”

Boardmember Gabe Escobedo supported Kafri’s interest in making the committee more effective, but reminded the board to stay focused. “More of what Ms. Kafri is talking about is like the mechanics, and I trust that Mr. Tedeschi will be responsive to the needs of the group and be able to present the information in a way that is going to be digestible,” he said. “What I would hope is that we can focus more on just the mechanics of what’s in the resolution — the words.”

The resolution passed unanimously, but not without raising questions about trust, power, and what transparency means when community expertise is asked to sit down.

As Escobedo noted: “We have the fiduciary responsibility…. It only makes sense to direct the work of the advisory committee to aid us in making those really difficult decisions.”

Finance

Simply Asset Finance reaches $2.6bn loan origination milestone in 2025

Published

1 day ago

December 15, 2025

Press Room

Simply Asset Finance reaches .6bn loan origination milestone in 2025

Improvements in the company’s own technology and stronger results in various regions contributed to increased efficiency in lending operations. Credit: Kunakorn Rassadornyindee / Shutterstock.com.

Simply Asset Finance has reported that its total loan origination reached £2bn ($2.6bn) in 2025, following its growth and lending activity during the period.

During 2025, the company’s gross loan book increased to £543m and its customer base grew to 13,000.

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Additional digital platforms came online, and commercial loans were added to the range of available finance solutions.

Improvements in the company’s own technology and stronger results in various regions contributed to increased efficiency in lending operations and a broader local presence for SME clients.

In July, Simply Asset Finance introduced Kara, an AI-powered virtual agent.

Kara uses the company’s past data to enhance user interactions, streamline internal processes, and speed up decisions on lending applications.

Simply Asset Finance CEO Mike Randall said: “Our growth this year has built on the momentum of 2024, and reaching £2bn is a clear milestone for the business. All our channels have driven that progress, with rising demand for specialist lending helping us expand our footprint and support even more SMEs across the UK.

“Despite a year of challenging economic conditions, small businesses have remained resilient and ready to invest. Kara has been central to meeting demand quickly and efficiently –  and we expect her value to our customers will only grow.

“As we head into 2026, we’re focused on carrying this momentum forward and working with even more brilliant businesses to unlock their potential.”

Last month, Simply Asset Finance became a Patron lender of the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB).

This partnership is aimed at supporting the broker community in the UK and increasing access to asset finance and leasing products through wider distribution.

The NACFB is known as an independent UK trade association for commercial finance intermediaries, promoting cooperation between lenders and brokers across the sector.