Last week’s Leasing Broker Conference brought together over 200 delegates to share ideas, insights, and perspectives on the future of the sector. With the title ‘Scaling Smart: Business Growth in a Regulated Landscape,’ the thread throughout the event was smart, sustainable business growth in an ever-evolving regulatory environment.
The BVRLA Leasing Broker Committee played a key role in shaping the agenda, ensuring the right balance between Compliance, Operational, and Market topics. Through keynote speakers and panel discussions, sessions explored regulation and compliance, business growth strategies, external market influences, and evolving customer expectations.
During the Compliance Focus session, delegates heard from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s Head of Consumer Finance Supervision, Costas Pittas, who noted it is vital that every firm takes a proactive approach to both the redress scheme and consumer complaints.
Costas offered clarity on next steps and practical considerations for BVRLA members including:
- Planning and allocating adequate resource for compliance, complaints and customer support- even if the products you offer are excluded from the redress scheme, the responsibility to handle member queries or complaints compliantly is not mitigated,
- Preparing for pinch points due to re-allocation of resource- how will your business as usual be impacted?
- Establishing how your firm will provide additional training to your staff in line with the regulatory expectations,
- Conducting a review of your data and records to understand what you have available- brokers will place a crucial part where lenders do not have access to data,
- Assessing the volume of complaints you have waiting for the current FCA pause to be lifted and the requirements for handling those once this takes place.
As the only dedicated event for the leasing broker sector, the conference once again offered attendees unrivalled opportunities to network and connect with potential partners.
Delegate feedback was positive, with many highlighting the value of expert insights shared throughout the day.
One delegate commented: “Highly informative and engaging, the conference supported the brokers in understanding industry developments and building useful professional connections.”
Planning has already begun on the 2026 Conference, look out for more details in the coming weeks.
