A new specialist finance platform aimed squarely at the UK’s construction and manufacturing sectors has launched in a bid to ease one of the most persistent headaches facing small business owners: getting the bank to say yes.
SME Funded, founded by construction mergers and acquisitions specialist Bradley Lay, has positioned itself as the country’s first genuine one-stop shop for funding in these two capital-hungry industries. The platform combines access to more than 130 lenders with its own deployable capital, promising faster decisions and more flexible terms than the traditional high street route.
The timing is pointed. British SMEs have spent the past two years navigating tighter lending criteria, lengthening approval times and a noticeable retreat from small business banking by the major clearers. The Federation of Small Businesses has repeatedly warned that funding bottlenecks are throttling growth at precisely the moment the country needs it most, while construction insolvencies remain stubbornly high and manufacturers wrestle with input cost volatility.
Lay, who knows the construction sector intimately after helping scale a business from £12 million to more than £150 million in revenue before exiting in 2022, is blunt about the problem he is trying to solve.
“SMEs are the backbone of the UK economy, yet when it comes to finance, they’re often underserved,” he said. “Traditional lenders are slow, restrictive and risk averse. When businesses are growing, they hold them back, and when they’re under pressure, they step away. We built SME Funded to change that. This is about giving business owners real access to capital, quickly, intelligently and without unnecessary barriers.”
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