The aim is to explore the national SME financing landscape and improve the understanding of leasing as a valuable form of investment finance, as well as identifying any potential obstacles hindering its use by local SMEs and how these could be tackled at national and ultimately European levels.

The roundtable series builds on Leaseurope’s research initiative on leasing to European SMEs, which has seen Oxford Economics undertake two studies on behalf of Leaseurope in order to better understand and quantify the importance of leasing to this key segment.

Leon Dhaene, director general of Leaseurope, said: “Leasing to SMEs remains a core focus area of Leaseurope’s research programme, which has been instrumental in building a comprehensive dataset and gathering market intelligence on this key client segment for our industry. I believe leveraging the findings at European level and acting locally through our Member Associations are equally important. By initiating these national roundtables, Leaseurope again contributes to the debate on SME access to finance and provides various SME stakeholders and policy makers with valuable evidence showing that leasing is a crucial form of finance for SMEs.”