MEET THE TEAM
Richard Perry
Founder & Asset Finance Specialist
Who Richard is
Richard founded Coastal Asset Finance after more than 30 years in the industry. He'd spent most of that time watching business funding become steadily more automated and steadily less personal, and he started the firm to work the other way round. It's deliberately small, because the moment it stops being possible to know every client's business properly, the thing he built it for stops working. Over three decades he has built relationships with funders across a wide range of sectors, and he uses that experience to work out who is worth approaching and why.
How Richard works
Richard asks about the business before he asks about the asset. Where it's going, what the next two years look like, what happened in the last difficult one. Thirty years of deals means he's usually seen a version of your situation before, and that's what shapes which funders are worth approaching, rather than which product sounds closest.
He'll also tell you when the answer is no. If the numbers don't support what you're asking for, or the structure would leave the business exposed further down the line, he'll say so rather than arrange it anyway. That costs him deals. It's also why a good number of his clients have been with him since before Coastal existed.
Complexity is where he's most useful. Several assets across different funders, a business mid-restructure, a requirement nobody has quite been able to place. Those need unpicking before they can be presented properly, and presenting them properly is usually what decides the outcome. You'll know what he thinks is realistic and what a funder will want to see before anything goes in.
What Richard can help with
You don't need to know which product you're after. Tell Richard what the business is trying to do and he'll work out which routes are worth looking at.
- Vehicle & asset finance, from a single vehicle to multi-asset and higher value requirements
- Refinance, restructuring existing agreements into something the business can manage
- Commercial loans, secured and unsecured, when working capital is the real need
- VAT & corporation tax funding, when a bill lands at the wrong point in the cycle
- Personal guarantee insurance, and what a guarantee actually commits you to
- Invoice finance, when the cash cycle is the underlying problem
IN RICHARD'S OWN WORDS
"Anyone can place an easy deal. The value is in the ones that need thinking about."
Why people come back
Some of Richard's clients have been with him for more than twenty years, through more than one business each. They arrived needing a single vehicle and now run fleets. A few went through a downturn with him and remember whose calls got returned.
That length of relationship changes what the job is. He isn't presenting options to a stranger. He knows what the business bought three years ago, what it's still paying for and whether now is the right moment to add to it. Sometimes the answer is to wait, and he'll say that too.
Most of the new work comes from accountants and existing clients. It's a slower way to grow than advertising, and it's the pattern he built the firm around. It also means almost everyone arrives already knowing how he works.
LET'S TALK
Talk it through with Richard
You don't need to have it worked out before you call. Tell Richard what the business is trying to do and he'll tell you what looks realistic.
