Renaissance Asset Finance Limited (‘RAF’) was founded in 2014, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Arbuthnot Latham and Co., Ltd (‘AL’) in April 2017. Our heritage, however, dates back to 1991 where we started out as a broker ourselves under the name Reliance Financial Contracts Limited (‘RFC’). The brokerage specialised in dealing with established small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and over the years developed a panel of more than 50 lenders and became one of the most successful brokerages in the UK. RFC was sold to a merchant bank, where the team developed a loan book of £70m from a standing start over the next five years. The portfolio was of extremely high quality, with low loss experience, resulting in it being one of the most profitable lending units per employee within the merchant bank. We still have members of this original team within the business today.
In 2014, the team decided to establish a new lending business, RAF. Over the following 3 years we matched the success we achieved as RFC, demonstrated by now being a wholly owned subsidiary of AL.
AL’s acquisition of RAF is a logical step in the AL strategy, to concentrate on providing a full suite of products and services to high net worth and relationship-intensive commercial clients and to augment this with the development of complementary revenue streams. AL was established over 180 years ago and is the London-based private banking & wealth management and commercial banking arm of the Arbuthnot Banking Group PLC, with regional offices in the North West and South West of the UK and an international branch in Dubai.