Shawbrook, which launched this week with a pledge to loan £250m to SMEs in 2012, has initially focused on the commercial mortgage market, requiring property as collateral on any loan.

However, new business director Stephen Johnson told PrintWeek that the bank would likely expand its offering in the coming year to include other forms of asset-based lending.

He said: "At the moment, in terms of our platform and capability, it's property-based but we are looking to build into the asset-based lending and invoice finance sectors. That will be something we'll be looking to develop next year.

"We could build our book from scratch, distributing through the brokers, [or] there may well be some brokers out there that have put together their own funding book that we could potentially wholesale for them so that they could do more. There are a number of ways we could transact to support the sector but it's a bit too early to be definitive on how we do that."

Johnson added that while asset finance and invoice discounting were "obvious areas" for Shawbrook to target, the bank did not intend to offer current accounts and overdrafts due to the nature of its business model.

"We are a specialist bank so we don't have a branch network and it's not really in our business plan to offer general banking current accounts and overdrafts," he said. "Part of our story is trying to raise awareness that there are other options for clients outside of the high street brands.

"Brokers are an important part of helping clients look for alternative funding, finding the right solution for them and then helping them through the process of getting that funding – it's about the value that a professional broker can provide to an SME."

Johnson opined that the UK print industry was typical of the markets that Shawbrook was targeting, in that the banks had retrenched from the sector and left it underserved.

"Print used to be well served and now it's being fundamentally propped up by one or two [lenders], which has had a big impact on the availability of credit. That's a theme we see across a lot of different lending markets at the moment," he said.

The arrival of new, small banks, like Shawbrook and Metro Bank, which became the first high street bank launch in 100 years when it opened its doors in July 2010, could prove vital in improving the supply of credit to SMEs because new banks are unencumbered by the need to deleverage their balance sheets.

Johnson reasons that much of the money the big four banks have received from QE will not result in new loans due to the increased capital requirements on banks and the high level of junk debt that arose from the sub-prime collapse.

"Some of that money will probably never make its way into the market because it will just get lost in people's balance sheets," he said.

"I think that we're an example of how the market is starting to evolve a little bit and I suspect you'll see more specialist banks trying to serve some of these markets that are underserved.

"We've had these huge issues within the big banks [because] they're having to hold a lot more capital and shrink down their property exposure but at the same time they're trying to lend more and that just doesn’t all work and as a result SMEs are seeing a lot less choice than is healthy for the economy as a whole."

Johnson stressed that while Shawbrook is 100% owned by RBS Equity Finance, it remained independent from RBS and received most of its funding from external investors.

"It is an independent business; it's raised its own fund of which 87% is not RBS, so it's general institutional investors who support equity funds," he said. "So while there is a published link with RBS we are thoroughly independent and we do compete with them and all the other banks."

He added that Shawbrook prided itself on making decisions on a case-by-case basis rather than "lending by numbers". "The decisions are made by people so we are trying to make pragmatic, sensible lending decisions and not be restricted by credit scores – that is pretty fundamental to the type of business we're trying to build," said Johnson.

"In terms of the decision-making process, our underwriting and lending managers are fundamentally empowered to make a judgement call based upon the information that's presented.

"One of the key things we're trying to do is recognise that every client is different and you can't have rules to determine that – I think once you start to go down that road you can make bad lending decisions by sticking to the rules and miss good lending opportunities because the rules won't let you do them."

Shawbrook, which offers commercial mortgages from £50,000 to £1m-plus, has already gained good traction in the SME market, where it has approved £130m of funding since April under the Whiteaway Laidlaw brand. It offers facilities from three to 30 years, meaning that the loans can be used to fulfil shorter-term borrowing requirements.