Landed estates with business interests across several activities will now be able to apply for loans on a whole enterprise basis rather having to seek separate finance for each sector.
Following a change of approach by the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (AMC), anyone seeking to raise project finance for a large diversified estate should find life easier from now on according to the corporation’s Adrian Cawood. He said that while lending to such estates had been established by AMC over many years, some funding applications proved “challenging” especially where various enterprises fell into different policy categories. This could result in the need for a myriad of different terms and conditions.Â
“We’ve now been able to overhaul our offering to estate-type businesses, which often combine such varying enterprises such as in-hand and let farming, let commercial and residential property, renewable energy, tourism, forestry and sporting activities,” he said. “Where previously, the loan application may have been split across agricultural, residential, commercial and so on, we will in future treat the whole business as one. This will make applications for finance simpler and hopefully more successful.”