Posted: Friday, 24 May 2019 @ 16:19
We live in a world where everyone’s a brand and there’s always something to celebrate on social media, and that can be a wonderful thing; we very much enjoy getting involved in the conversations online.
However, one of the things that has come out of this culture is a pressure to illustrate business growth with shiny bells and whistles, and while our achievements at Rivers Leasing are just as exciting to us, and just as hard won, they are not quite as glossy.
The shape of growth at Rivers Leasing
For us, growth is largely about increasing the number of people we can loan to and scaling our model of business without compromising on the high standards that has got us to where we are today.
We may not be able to show you a new office or an award-winning advertising campaign built on profits generated by investments; instead we focus on developing our business, moving it forward through carefully planned organic growth and delivering on the promises we make to all our stakeholders.
What we can show is a track record that gives us the solid foundations upon which to predict further sustainable development. For example, Rivers Leasing has experienced strong and steady growth since its launch in 2011 and in the last two years alone our business origination has increased by 33% in 2017 and 37% in 2018.
Steady and consistent development
All of that said, our career to date has not been void of glossy moments - every member of the extended Rivers Leasing family has celebrated with us for the last two years when we have been named in the Financial Times FT1000.
This year we reached number 391 in the list identifying the 1,000 European companies with the strongest growth between the years 2013 and 2016. It followed our success in the inaugural rankings in 2017, in which we reached 186th.
We are sure you will all also be quivering in your seats to know that in April this year we introduced a new product in the form of hire purchase. Although a well proven product in the SME market it had not been part of our portfolio before, and we, at least, are pretty excited about it.
This autumn we are poised for further developments which we will continue to share in good time - not because we imagine it will get you swooning with excitement, or because we think it will be a trending topic in the online stratosphere, but because central to our business are the relationships we have with our investors, brokers, clients and team, it is their trust in our hard work and due diligence that we value most highly.
So no, we’re not all glitter and jazz hands, and we’re not racing into the future at the pace of the hares of this world, but we are steady, consistent and carefully considered, and to that end do make rather excellent tortoises.