Juice at NACFB Commercial Finance Expo 2026

Yesterday in Birmingham, 2,200 industry professionals walked through the doors of the NEC for the biggest NACFB Commercial Finance Expo on record. We were there from Juice, and the day made a few things clear about where UK SME funding is heading.

The short version: the broker channel is growing, the revolving credit facility came up in more conversations than anything else, and the gap between what SMEs need and what banks are offering keeps widening.

A bigger room, a clearer signal

NACFB has been the gathering point of UK commercial finance brokers for years, but this year was different in scale. 2,200 professionals in one hall is a market signal in its own right. Brokers don't fly to Birmingham for a quiet Wednesday in June unless there's something to come for.

According to the British Business Bank, alternative lenders now account for around 60% of SME lending market share. Banks have steadily pulled back from large parts of small business credit since 2020, and brokers have become the connective tissue between SMEs that need flexible funding and the lenders who can deliver it.

Revolving credit was the throughline

If there was a product getting talked about more than any other on the floor, it was the revolving credit facility.

That makes sense if you look at how UK SMEs trade. Most don't need a single lump sum sitting on the balance sheet earning interest charges. They need funding that arrives when an invoice arrives, gets repaid when a customer settles, and is available again the next time a supplier wants paying.

A fixed-term loan asks businesses to commit upfront to a debt level and a repayment schedule that doesn't bend with their cash flow. An RCF doesn't. The structure matches the way money moves through a small business, and brokers were telling us that's exactly why their clients are asking about it.

Why brokers are at the centre of this

Brokers see SMEs at the moment of need. They sit closer to the decision than any internal lender ever will. When a client phones about a £200k inventory order or a wholesale opportunity that needs bridging, the broker has to know which lender to call, what product to recommend, and how fast the answer needs to come back.

The brokers we spoke to at NACFB weren't shopping for the cheapest rate. They were shopping for the lender who would respond fastest, with the right product, in language their client could understand. That is a different game from a decade ago, when shopping the panel was mostly about pricing.

It is also why the broker channel is now where the deal flow is gaining momentum. SMEs trust the broker. Brokers trust the lenders who keep showing up. The RCF, in particular, has become the product that proves whether a lender understands how an SME trades.

Where Juice fits in

Juice Flex is our take on the RCF: a continuous line of credit that works alongside your business. Draw when you need it, repay when it suits you, and only pay for what you use. No fixed expiry, no mandatory top-ups.

We spent most of NACFB talking through how that works in practice with brokers across sectors. The questions that came up most often: how fast we could say yes, what the security looked like at different facility sizes, and what flexibility there was once the facility was live.

Those are the right questions. They are the ones the SMEs sitting behind the brokers are asking.

What this means for the industry

If NACFB 2026 is anything to go by, the next decade of UK SME funding will be shaped by three things working together:

• A broker channel that keeps growing in influence and volume
• A funding model built around revolving credit rather than fixed-term debt
• Lenders who can match the speed and clarity that the broker channel demands

Banks are unlikely to rebuild the SME lending muscle they have let shrink since 2020. The opportunity sits with the lenders who can serve brokers at speed and the brokers who can serve their clients with confidence.

Catching up on the conversations

If you were at NACFB and we missed each other, get in touch. We have spent the last few years building a credit facility designed for the way UK SMEs trade, and we would be glad to talk through how Juice Flex fits a broker's panel.

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