Dear LMA Members
My first full year leading this great association is coming to an end and I want to express my sincere thanks for all your help, support and contribution through the year. We have done a lot of great things together for your loan markets.
I have to immediately praise the quality of the LMA team and also doff the cap and acknowledge their contribution delivering these successes in 2024. More of this later.
I was trying to work out how many of you I have had the pleasure to meet through 2024 and it has to be in the 100s – across EMEA, United States, and APAC, and specifically I believe 11 LMA conferences, and many third-party events where we have had the pleasure of speaking on behalf of the EMEA loan markets. Additionally, while my waistline may not agree it has been a pleasure to see many of you bilaterally, enjoying simple coffee through to full blown dinners.
More seriously, 2024 continued to see these markets move at pace and adapt to the changing flows of capital. I feel the LMA has also adapted and flexed well to reflect these changes and to continue to deliver meaningful and tangible benefits.
So as I look back where do I start?
At a macro and geo-politic level 2024 has seen several major elections within many cases a new hand at the helm. Interest rates remain elevated, and banking and lending regulation is still evolving. The weight of capital from NBFIs remains high with expectations of increased dominance, particularly in the space of private credit with more and more managers expanding to asset-based lending.
In the realm of technology, we ‘ve seen considerable advancements, though in some areas it remained frustratingly the same, certainly as we review loan operations and settlements.
I have endeavoured to showcase the LMA more through our communications and media. I have been so pleasing to see how our transparency has been recognised and how you have responded with your own asks, but more so in your collaboration with us to promote and fill these channels.
The numbers tell their own story, so I wanted to share the infographic below, which points to the strength of our members’ engagement with the LMA as well as its importance as a trusted and respected voice for the loan market. It is always worth a compare and contrast and hopefully show continuous improvement. Membership is up by 30 net, and at a gross level 80 new joiners – we have an exciting prospect list already as we enter 2025. While we reduced our number of events (from 80 to less than 50) we still saw over 6000 attendees through the year, across various financial centres. And we have delivered in person training to over 1000 of our individual members covering local markets, product specificity, our trusted Certification Course, and the launch of Futurelend.
With this strong membership base we remain the trusted and authoritative voice of the loan market.
The LMA continues to lead in this area and plays a pivotal role in driving initiatives that support sustainable finance. In 2024 we published six key documents, including Draft Provisions for Green Loans and Guidelines for Sustainability Linked Loan Financing Bonds. Our team is closely engaged with key regulatory stakeholders and the collaboration with other trade associations is to be commended.
You will have seen the launch of Horizons, our new award winning publication, supported by the Sustainability LMA microsite. We also marked a major event in November with the Sustainable Finance Conference, further solidifying our commitment to sustainable finance.
The LMA celebrated the cooperation and partnership of a large group of stakeholders, helping achieve a successful Libor transition. The work continues though as we support members on JIBAR transition, with some requirements to help and support EURIBOR fallbacks. We recently published a document on EUROIBOR and interbank term rate fallbacks. More on this can be found here.
A broad church of consultations, comment pieces, stakeholder engagement and member input has fed our work on advocacy in 2024. The coverage as expected has been incredibly broad across product, region, and client – albeit we recognise the importance of the LMA as the representative trade body to reflect your views.
Important deliverables for the LMA have been IOSCO response on leveraged finance, ESMA response on UCITs and ELTIFs, and EC and BofE request for comment on securitisation and capital markets union.
It has been pleasing to see the recognition of the LMA by these key bodies and we have increased our ongoing dialogue and connectivity with an established cadence.
It has been an exciting year in the events space for the LMA.
Many of you have supported us through not only attendance but also providing excellent speakers and panellists. As I look back, I feel the content has deepened and the speaker roster has seen the bar raise.
There were several notable entrants to our programme. Firstly, we held our first European LMA conference in Paris. This event, despite being close to the Annual Conference, was a resounding success. For 2025, we plan to ensure that it is a standalone event in the calendar, with a more distinctly European agenda and venue.
Next up was the new FutureLend events. We had over 200 attendees from the new generation of talent of our members, with a focus more on the softer skills needed to be successful in a finance career. The speakers were incredible with some moving keynotes from the world of sports. I would like to sincerely thank the speakers from all the members who gave up their time and provided personal and authentic career stories.
A CRI/SRT conference was introduced and again hit all the high notes around delivery, attendance and content. And it would be remiss not to mention the Operations conference where we set out a challenge to improve settlement times.
Our annual conference saw a change in style, introducing a stream format which was incredibly well received and raised the bar on expectations for 2025. It was fantastic to see over 1000 attendees.
2024 has marked a shift in how we look to support our markets, adopting a more proactive and progressive stance. This has primarily been achieved through our publications and research. Over the year, we have published numerous insightful pieces covering key topics, covering private credit and the role of NBFIs, the growth of funds finance, considerations in Credit Risk Insurance and Significant Risk Transfer, and guidance around NPLs and CRR3.
This is an important objective for us here to be that voice and project that proactive tone.
To supplement this work, we have enhanced the communication offering by utilising other media activity and channels including blogs, podcasts, and even Spotify, and upped the cadence frequency. I trust you have enjoyed the offering and if not let us know what we can do more of or differently.
If you recall the goals from last year one of the key focus points was to have increased engagement with the Institutional Investor part of the market and ensure we represented their voice. I believe we have made good progress in this regard, albeit more to do.
We started the year with our Private Credit Conference in London and celebrated many of the successes with our members at the end of year drinks. Our key events had pivotal sessions covering key market themes, even including one on Liability Management Exercises and Financing of Data Centres. Through the year we worked closely with our working groups particularly around regulatory advocacy and innovation in product development.
The Institutional Investor Committee was launched in November with the initial working groups kicking off in January. There are a number of important asks already lined up for us and we of course encourage more from you.
Specifically, through 2024 we announced guidance for Primary Delayed Settlement Compensation. This is just the start of the journey and we continue to work with the member firms to look to increase this adoption.
We set out a commitment to reduce secondary settlement times by 25% in 2024 and as we approach the end of the year, while we may end up short we will have helped your market achieve the lowest average times in a very long period. Again, more to go in 2025.
It is pleasing to report we end 2024 in a position of financial strength, supported by member growth. Your Board recently supported the 2025 strategy alongside the resource requirements needed to execute it successfully. 2024 has been about establishing the foundation to support growth and to ensure the LMA team is empowered and focussed to execute. I believe this is in place.
With this foundation in place, 2025 will be characterised by More, Same, and Less: On the “more” we will be increasing delivery and output on the NBFI side, increasing engagement and representation with our key regulatory stakeholders, and aligning more with emerging technology in the loan ecosystem.
As you have seen we have kicked off a major initiative supporting our members in the Funds Finance sector with an already defined set of strategic deliverables due in 2025. Thank you to all the contributors to this over the last few months.
Sustainable Finance remains a critical cornerstone of our work and has significant resource allocated to this in 2025.
Regionally, Africa and Middle East are also material focus points, and will be supported by more local events, but more importantly delivering tangible specific outputs that help liquidity, efficiency and transparency. There is also a significant opportunity for us to enhance our digital offering, delivering more engaging and relevant content via this channel. One of the highlights of this will be the launch of the LMA Academy, which will house much of our digital learning and training content.
The integration of technology into our market will of course continue to be a broader priority for the LMA. There are several streams of activity underway to support members’ collaboration with LoanTech providers and showcase use cases. LMA.Automate will also be a part of this digital strategy, as we launch a free offering to all members.
2025 will be a great year for the LMA. I am hugely optimistic about what we can achieve, working together. As per the conference tagline Further Together, I feel we will embrace this pace of change of our loan markets, acknowledge the potential, and create a collaborative partnership with your engagement, leading to success.
I introduced a LMA Christmas Wish List last year with a request for you to tell me the one thing you are looking for from the LMA to make the loan market better. I had over 35 responses and I hope to see more this year. Please click on this link to let me know. I will review every response and reply individually, if you choose to provide your name.
Finally, let me wish you and your loved ones a very happy holiday period and all the very best for 2025 on behalf of everyone at the LMA.
I am looking forward to working with you all.
Best Regards,
Scott McMunn
CEO
