Startline Motor Finance has revealed that it intends to push its services into the top 200 franchise dealer groups as part of a new strategy designed to continue the business' growth momentum.

Since the start of 2017, the company has seen a 25% increase in the number of major dealer groups it works with.

Startline’s chief executive Paul Burgess (pictured) said: “The design of our motor finance product and the way that it fits into a dealer’s lender panel means that it is really designed for larger franchise groups and car supermarkets.

“This means that the list of our prospective customers is relatively small.

“We enjoy quite impressive market penetration for a relatively new company but we want to ensure that we continue to build on the success that we have seen so far.

“To that end, we are having a concerted push into the top 200 groups across the UK.

“We find that if we can get in front of decision makers, they immediately see the value of our proposition.

“The trick is to get that seat and we tend to do it in a very direct way – by approaching the senior management on a director-to-director basis.”

Burgess said that he believed there was a growing awareness among dealer groups that they needed to take a fresh a look at their motor finance provision in general to meet changing market conditions and needs, especially examining the lenders making up their panel.

“We believe that there is an increasing realisation in the motor finance sector that a more traditional approach to lending is no longer meeting the needs of a large number of car buyers because of changes in factors such as employment patterns and home ownership.

“That is why a new generation of lenders, including Startline, are making significant inroads into dealer motor finance by positioning ourselves as a valuable add-on to the dealer panel - a more flexible kind of prime lender.”

He said that Startline was able to offer finance to a significant proportion of customers who had been rejected by traditional prime lenders.