Motor Finance broker DSG Finance has launched a new lending business, Unity Facilities.
The lender will be available through dealers who are partnered with DSG, and is fully Financial Conduct Authority-regulated.
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Unity will provide a multi-tiered product, offering finance from just below prime into the mid-level subprime arena.
The lender is being soft launched as a proof of concept. The current plan, as Motor Finance understands it, is to ramp up volumes in Spring 2017.
The launch comes less than a year after DSG received an investment from Promethean Investments. No financial details of the investment have been released.
According to Richard Hoggart, DSG managing director, all of DSG’s lender partners were notified of the company’s plans to launch a lender when the initial investment was made.
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By GlobalDataWhen questioned whether the launch of Unity might affect DSG’s relationship with existing dealers, Hoggart said it shouldn’t, as he didn’t believe the launch would cannibalise the volumes of DSG’s existing lender partners.
He said: “We don't think that's going to happen because we're on a growth curve where we believe we can comfortably maintain and continue to grow what we're doing with most of our lenders, whilst at the same time satisfying our own requirements as well.
“We've invested significant sums to ensure we've got the growth, and we've been quite successful with new account acquisition at DSG.
“If we were just going to maintain volumes, you could argue somebody was going to suffer, and how would they react to that. But we don't think that is going to happen.”
In addition, Unity and DSG are legally separate companies. Although the two share a board, there are no other shared staff between the two. “From all the staffs’ perspective in the office, Unity is just another lender,” Hoggart adds.
Motor Finance will have a full interview with Hoggart about the launch of Unity next week.
