Welcome

astl A Welcome from the Chief Executive of the Association of Short Term Lenders

By Adrian Bloomfield, CEO of the astl

I am delighted to mention again that our short term lending industry is healthy and expanding.  Here at the trade body we are receiving a regular number of enquiries about our work, how to get started and also how to grow as a short term lender.  Additionally I am very pleased to report that several firms have made enquiries about joining our association and we are more than happy to have extended invitations and offer full membership to 5 companies this year;

As you will appreciate these new member lenders vary in size and tradition and they are all more than welcome to join our ranks and we hope continue to play an important part in our industry.  As well as the new full members we have invited a start up business called Phoenica to join us as a probationary member.  Naturally we hope they will find their place in our market and develop into full membership in due course. 

We continue to receive a steady level of interest for associate membership and we are always keen to extend invitations, especially to firms of service providers to our members.  With this in mind we are pleased to accept information and articles drafted by associate members, especially those that are newsworthy and innovative, to pass to members.  In this way we hope to continue to inform as well as nudge our members towards supporting our associates where and when it is appropriate to do so. 

We have continued an active dialogue with the FSA and in April we submitted comprehensive data in accordance with their request.  The data was collected and collated as usual by our auditors and we hope and expect to discuss this data with the FSA at our next delegation meeting. 

For the first time we held an election for membership of our executive committee.  I consider it a sign of strength of our trade body that we had 8 nominations from which to fill our 6 places.  The level of support and of course the participation by all members in the voting process was most encouraging.  After the votes were counted the committee to serve for the following year is;

The executive of the astl extends sincere thanks to all members and associates for the support we have received.  The astl is going from strength to strength due to the participation of the members in our work and dealing with the issues.