45% of brokers who operate in the bridging, development finance and asset finance sectors have found that business levels and enquiries during the first half of 2014 have exceeded their expectations.

A broker survey carried out by United Trust Bank has found that a further 42% of brokers had found business and enquiry levels to be around what they’d expected and just 12% were a little behind target.

79% of broker respondents also believed that they’d started to see the effects of an economic recovery on their business and 90% described the outlook for their business for the remainder of 2014 as good or very good.

Harley Kagan, managing director of United Trust Bank, said: “It’s great to see that the majority of brokers are still busy writing business and receiving plenty of new enquiries. Certainly at United Trust Bank there’s been no let-up in proposals or completions and the amount of money currently loaned to customers is at an all time high.

“We’ve seen further growth across the development finance, bridging and asset finance divisions this year and have developed our teams accordingly to ensure that we maintain our high service levels. We’ve created new roles in sales, support and credit and have recruited specialists like Kevin Flowerday and Nick Warren to expand our product range and deepen our expertise in new sectors.

“Although there’s a sense that credit may be easing as we move farther away from recession, there still appears to be little incentive for SMEs to return to the high street lenders. As a specialist bank offering a superior, bespoke service I’m confident that brokers will have good reasons to continue to recommend us to their clients rather than steer them back to the impersonal and often inflexible mainstream lenders.”