New £450m London Stock Exchange securitisation for Glasgow-based Startline – Scottish Business News

A new £450 million London Stock Exchange securitisation has been carried out by Glasgow-based Startline Motor Finance.

The move has seen the company float around three quarters of its existing assets under management as part of the securitisation programme, listed under the name Satus, with the business also maintaining its ongoing funding relationship with global bank J.P. Morgan.

It follows an earlier £292 million securitisation carried out in late 2021 which, like the new securitisation, was significantly oversubscribed.

Founded in 2013, Startline has 80,000 customers, £600 million of assets under management and employs 200 people at its Skypark head offices. 

Specialising in near prime motor finance, it works with around half of the UK’s top 50 franchise motor dealers by turnover as well as 70% of the top 50 independent car retailers, accounting for around 2% of the total UK motor finance market.

Paul Burgess, CEO at Startline, said: “The new securitisation attracted a broad and diverse pool of high quality international investors and was significantly oversubscribed, which is something of a rarity and a testament to the quality of business that the team here in Glasgow is writing.

“This is a strategy designed to help us make more efficient use of our capital and diversify our funding. In the future, we plan to carry out further regular securitisations and also potentially access mezzanine funding. It will give us the right mix to continue to expand, we believe.”

He added that Startline has been investing heavily in technology, with new systems including a sophisticated business portal for dealers, biometric e-Sign to enable new credit agreements to be processed more quickly and efficiently, and a range of AI-style robotic process automations.

“There also continues to be a strong investment by the leadership team in employee engagement and this has resulted in us being listed as ‘One to Watch’ under the well-known Best Companies initiative designed to help employees identify the best employers.”