Martin Mackenzie draws on twenty years of banking and asset finance experience to explain the options available to businesses when financing an asset, and why the choice of broker matters more than most people realise.
Martin Mackenzie has spent twenty years in financial services and banking. He has worked for Bank of Scotland, Close Brothers Asset Finance, and Highland Credit and Leasing Services. In 2026 he founded Mackenzie Commercial Finance after identifying a gap in the Scottish market: a broker with a genuine, primary focus on refinance and equity release, not as a side product offered reluctantly, but as a core specialism. Martin is an experienced broker in Asset Finance, covering Hire Purchase and Leasing for business vehicles, machinery, equipment and other movable assets. His individual specialism is asset equity release and refinance, often called Sale and HP Back. Mackenzie Commercial Finance is based in Inverness but covers the whole of Scotland.
How Do Businesses Pay for Assets?
Take a business owner in the Highlands who needs a Volkswagen Crafter van or a new excavator. They have a few routes they can go down, and most of them have a catch.
The first option is the dealer's own finance. This can genuinely be the right answer in specific circumstances. If you are buying a brand new JCB from a franchise dealer, you have been trading for a long time, and the manufacturer is running a subsidised deal, the in-house rate can be very competitive. But this is the exception, not the rule. Most businesses buying used equipment, or those without a straightforward profile, will not get those deals.
The second option is going to your own bank. If you are a large corporate with a named relationship manager who knows your business, this can work well. But most businesses in Scotland now face call centres, slow processes and no dedicated contact. Banks have been raising the threshold for dedicated relationship managers for years. For most SMEs, the bank is no longer a practical first port of call for asset finance.
The third option is going direct to an asset finance lender. This gives you a named contact, which is an improvement. But it gives you one lender, one underwriter and one set of credit appetite. If your proposal does not fit their criteria, that is where the conversation ends. It is worth knowing that the majority of lenders Martin Mackenzie works with are broker-only. They do not have a direct sales force. Going direct is not always even an option.
You could pay cash. Some businesses do, and sometimes it is the right call. But cash tied up in a depreciating asset is cash not working elsewhere in the business.
The final option is using a broker. The broker gathers information about the asset, the business and the financials. They then identify the most suitable lenders based on what the customer actually needs: speed, cost, simplicity, or a combination of all three. The quality of that matching is where the broker adds value. A good broker does not just submit to whoever answers the phone first. They know which lenders will look at a proposal like yours, who will value the asset most favourably, and who will move quickest if that is what matters.
Not All Brokers Are Equal
I want to be straight about this, because the broker market in Scotland is varied and not all of it is serving customers well.
There is a type of broker that has been trading since the 1980s. Their client base is largely inherited, passed down through generations of business owners who have always dealt with the same firm. Some of these brokers are ex-bankers with genuine experience and real knowledge. But many have not joined a larger network, which means their lender panel is small, sometimes fewer than ten lenders. Compliance monitoring can be limited. Clients stay loyal because they do not know what else exists. There are good ones and less good ones, but the panel limitation is a real problem when you need the right lender for an unusual situation.
Then there is the type of broker that appears at the top of Google when you search asset finance in Inverness. They are usually based somewhere in the south of England and they paid for that position. Call centres, account managers with volume targets, high throughput. They generally have good market access and can handle a straightforward deal efficiently. But they do not visit you. They do not get to know your business. And refinance is not their world. Refinance takes time, requires an in-person inspection of the asset, and needs a carefully written proposal. A volume-driven broker will not invest that time, and most will quietly decline a refinance enquiry rather than admit they cannot do it properly.
Then there is the generalist one-stop-shop. They do asset finance, invoice finance, commercial property, mortgages, and probably something else besides. Fair play to them for the ambition. But specialism matters. If your roof is leaking, you call the roofer, not the handyman.
What Martin Mackenzie considers the right combination is this: twenty years of banking experience, comparable to the best of the old-school brokers. Access to over 120 lenders through Crystal Business Finance, comparable to the reach of the large volume operations. A personal, face-to-face service that neither of those categories can offer. And a genuine, primary specialism in refinance and equity release that none of the above categories offer properly.
Why Refinance Is Different
Refinance, or Sale and HP Back as it is sometimes called, is the process of releasing equity from an asset your business already owns. The asset is valued, sold to the finance company, and then hired back to you over an agreed term. You get a cash lump sum. The asset stays in use. Done properly, it is a powerful tool for a business that needs liquidity without taking on unsecured debt.
Not all brokers will touch it. Martin Mackenzie will, and has done it many times.
The reason most brokers avoid refinance is that it takes significantly more work. It requires an inspection of the asset, a carefully written proposal that tells the business story, and detailed knowledge of which lenders will consider refinance and at what loan-to-value. Many lenders simply will not do it. Others will, but only under specific conditions, at specific percentages of value, and with specific asset types. Knowing which lender to approach, and how to approach them, is not something you pick up after two years in a call centre.
The old-school broker often sees a refinance request as a signal that the business is in trouble. Sometimes it is. But often it is not. It is a business making a smart decision about its balance sheet. A broker who assumes the worst will simply decline to help.
The volume broker will ask whether you can drive the asset to a compound for inspection. If you cannot, or if it is a piece of fixed machinery, the conversation usually ends there.
Go direct to a single lender and you get one valuation, one set of criteria, and one offer. That offer might be half of what the next lender would have provided. You have no way of knowing unless you have done this many times and know the market.
An experienced refinance broker knows which lenders value assets most favourably. They know which of those lenders are broker-only and not available direct. They know how to write a proposal that presents the business in the best possible light without misrepresenting anything. That knowledge, built over twenty years, is what Martin Mackenzie brings to every refinance case he handles.
How Brokers Get Paid
On a successful placement, the lender pays the broker a commission. The customer pays nothing upfront and owes nothing if the deal does not complete. The commission amount is disclosed in full before any agreement is signed.
This disclosure became a formal requirement for unregulated commercial asset finance following the court rulings in Johnson v FirstRand Bank, Wrench v FirstRand Bank and Hopcraft v Close Brothers in late 2024. For regulated finance, covering sole traders and partnerships under certain thresholds, commission disclosure requirements existed earlier. Mackenzie Commercial Finance discloses all commissions to all parties, in all cases.
Some brokers charge an upfront engagement fee before any work is done. Mackenzie Commercial Finance does not. The view is simple: paying a fee before you know whether finance is even achievable is poor value for the customer. If the deal does not happen, the customer should not be out of pocket.
Some brokers also share commission with introducing dealers. This is common, legal, and acceptable. It should always be disclosed. At Mackenzie Commercial Finance, all commissions are disclosed, including any shared with introducers.
On the question of whether going direct to a lender is cheaper: not necessarily. A self-employed broker earns no salary. The equivalent person at a lender with a direct sales team earns a salary, bonuses, a company car, pension contributions and holiday pay. That cost is built into the lender pricing one way or another. It is partly why the majority of lenders on the Mackenzie Commercial Finance panel are broker-only and do not maintain their own direct sales force.
What You Can Expect from Mackenzie Commercial Finance
Whether you are in Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, or anywhere else in Scotland, the approach is the same. Martin Mackenzie will take time to understand what you need, search the most appropriate lenders from a panel of over 120, present the options clearly, and work to get the deal done. If that means driving to Dumfries on a Sunday evening to sign paperwork, that is what happens.
Every type of broker exists for a reason, and different customers have different needs. But for a Scottish business owner looking for asset finance, and especially one who wants to explore refinance or equity release, the combination of genuine banking experience, a large lender panel and a personal, in-person service is a difficult combination to find. That is what Mackenzie Commercial Finance was set up to provide.
The views expressed in this article are the personal opinions of Martin Mackenzie and are intended as general information only. Nothing in this article should be taken as financial advice or a recommendation. Martin Mackenzie is an experienced asset finance professional and Director of Mackenzie Commercial Finance Ltd. As at 3 September 2026, Martin's name appears on the website of a previous employer, Highland Credit and Leasing Services (hcls.org.uk). He has not been employed by or associated with that business for a couple of years. Mackenzie Commercial Finance Ltd is an Appointed Representative of Crystal Business Finance Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are a broker, not a lender. We will receive a commission from the lender for all completed agreements.