The first of Capitalflow’s series of events, “A Thank You Evening with Capitalflow”, took place on March 21^st in the Westin Hotel, Dublin.

In addition to thanking our supporters to date, the event showcased the growth of Capitalflow, our new logo & website. and our growth journey from a team of 3 in 2016 to a team of now over 50 employees, making us Ireland’s fastest growing specialist business lender.

From the outset, the event was chaired by “The Positive Economist”, Susan Hayes, who started the evening by giving an overview of how far the Irish economy has come since the economic crash, to become the fastest growing economy in Europe for the past three years and the largest exporter of ICT services in the world, according to the OECD. Susan also reminded us of the issues Ireland still faces, such as the housing crisis, regional broadband difficulties, and the uncertainty of Brexit, to name but a few.

The second speaker of the night, Ronan Horgan, CEO of Capitalflow discussed the real opportunities in Ireland today, with unemployment at 6%; a crane count of 80 in Dublin, and predictions that the economy is is to grow by 4.78% in 2018. Ronan outlined the reason for the formation of Capitalflow, the real need for alternative business lenders in today’s Irish market, and the over-reliance on single sources of finance.

Having recently grown the Capitalflow product portfolio from invoice discounting, asset based lending, HP. leasing, refinancing and hire purchase, to now include commercial property finance, Capitalflow were delighted to be joined by the third speaker, Prof. Ronan Lyons, of Trinity College Dublin and DAFT.ie, who discussed the current property market opportunities and shortcomings, such as lack of housing – building started on less than 7000 houses in 2017 versus a demand of over 15000 and regionally, Galway needed 1000 homes last year and it got only 110, however the main levers of the fixes put forward by Ronan, are within domestic control.

The evening was rounded up with a panel discussion – with Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner of Capitalflow’s funder, Pollen Street Capital, Paul McCann, Partner in Grant Thornton, Colm Breslin, Managing Director of Capitalflow’s Commercial Real Estate and Ronan Lyons, TCD & Daft.ie. The discussion centred around the changing financial landscape in Ireland, Commercial Property Opportunites, Brexit opportunities – businesses looking to move out of the UK due to Brexit will have little choice due to the language and Dublin is the natural choice – and finally the real potential for businesses to access funding from alternative sources, which accounts for 24% of all lending in Ireland today.

Due to space constraints, spaces were limited at our March event, however, we will be holding a series of future events all over the country in the coming weeks. If you would like to attend one of our events or indeed hear more about Capitalflow, and it’s journey to become Ireland’s fastest growing specialist business lender,  please get in touch today!