CEO Monthly Update – May 2025 - LMA- Loan Market Association

Scott McMunn
LMA
LMA News

Dear Members,

What a great May. What’s not to like with two public holidays in the UK, and a school half term. Personally, I very much enjoyed the success of my football club, even if I didn’t make it to Wroclaw to see Chelsea in person. My golf game is less successful, but a function of competing time pressures. My other indulgence was embracing the Eurovision Song Contest – alas the familiar “United Kingdom nul points” was repeated too often over the event.

The loan markets have shown less volatility I feel on the observable trading side, with some recovery from the volatility in April. It does feel we are a tweet or a newspaper article away from the next bout, however, and you all feel that I am sure far more than me – managing your risk, balance sheets, and clients.

It was another pleasing month of connections for me and the team. I didn’t quite hit the high note of April, but I managed to see over 20 of you individually (some of the numbers being member prospects – again always pleasing to see interest in joining this great association).

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me or the team here if you wish to understand more, or even better for us to put yourself forward to be involved with our work – we appreciate you!

The LMA Finco met in May to cover the operational and strategic performance of the LMA. I am so pleased to see the development of this over the last 12 months, and I will look to get an update sent to you all from our Chair and Vice Chairs giving their view and comment. I will update you specifically at the upcoming September AGM (watch for some exciting news there) on our progress and strategic goals for 2026.

Futurelend London was an incredible success, and I wish to thank all the seniors from the industry for participating in the panels and the coaching sessions. Without this help it would just be a talking shop. A special mention to our keynotes from the world of music and fintech – great stories and wonderful reception from our 120 future leaders!

Also, in May I had the pleasure to host our Scandic conference, and with Gemma we also managed 4 round tables in Oslo and Helsinki – over 300 people over 3 days and some challenging and complementary bi-laterals.

Despite some of the travel challenges I was also able to get to Lagos and see another 200 of our members. Note to self – don’t forget to bring gifts back for the family!

Our online Financial Analysis Hub is now live, and I am encouraged by initial take-up. I am keen to deliver more through the year and welcome your suggestions. Our new junior board will also input into this

f I can ask for help from you as members, it would be across the following areas.

Generally, we need and want your engagement. Magic doesn’t just happen, and we need to ensure our members are getting what they need from us, aware of our work, can contribute to the progress, and share the collective success. I know it is on us, but if you feel you are not seeing many of the things I speak about, or you want to see how you can bang the LMA drum within your, let me know and we will support you.

Next up is technology. The LMA as you know has been pushing on the operations side, reducing friction and settlement times. Loan technology is much more than that and with increasing regulatory interest we want to set the tone for the loan markets – generative AI, tokenisation, doctech, sustaintech, and even marketplace solutions. You will see these themes through our next series of comms, but we need your voice too – if you wish to be involved or have your firms engaged let me know. We need use cases, and we need to understand the challenges to adoption. In the next quarter I intend to launch our first Technology Committee and working groups.

Finally, please promote the LMA. I have broad shoulders, so I don’t need to see it personally, but it is so pleasing to see my team receive compliments, positive feedback, and sometimes just a simple “well done”. From events, to comms, to even our member admin and platform support – these teams are the unsung support to delivery. On the promotion side I have been proud to see some of the industry leaders praise our work in their own comms and their own speaking engagements. Always good to see we are getting the job done!

I am sure you are not surprised to hear that things don’t just happen and a lot of what you see as outputs take many months to plan, resource, and build out. I would like to touch on a few of these below.

Firstly events.

In 2026 the LMA is launching four totally new large scale impact events. These are all targeted at unique member cohorts, but all are fully embedded into our longer-term strategy to represent the EMEA loan markets and be your authoritative voice.

February will see two large conferences. First is a unique technology event, showcasing technological solutions to loan market problems, and supporting the technology mission referred to above. Our aim is to provide a platform for all loan technology firms to come together with their end users and prospective users, allowing a marketplace style proposition – this will embrace event technology with silent pitches, curate for targeted persona 121s, but more importantly bring together in one place the future technology shaping or soon to be shaping the loan markets. I am excited to launch this over the next few months.

Second is a joint venture with ICMA in development, focussing on the African loan and capital markets – this event is expected to bring together over 1000 market leaders gather in Cape Town and set a new industry benchmark event.

And April will see our first foray into APAC as we showcase the European loan and CLO markets to the local investor community.

Finally, May will see our new large Fund Finance event, building out on the excellent work the LMA has been doing to support this lending vertical over the last 9 months and through the remainder of 2025.

Please reach out to Meike (Meike.landers@lma.eu.com) or me for more information. The eternal challenge with events is to ensure we have great content and great speakers. I am encouraged to see volunteers come through offering to speak. Keep it coming. I am also keen to hear your ideas to keep our events fresh and topical – please be vocal. And please continue to turn up and enjoy!

Thanks to those who have responded on the build out of our working groups. To deliver what our members are asking for, we still need more engagement and involvement, so I continue to ask for your volunteering here. We are still missing some key parts of the loan community.

The Dubai conference will be held in October alongside a training day, and we need to plan for 2026 already, particularly if we extend to other venues. The work on our local legal documents is on track and we will provide some training for that also at the event.

An encouraging few months for us here as we have recalibrated our regulatory affairs offering. We are already seeing increased engagement with you, and more importantly we are also gaining recognition and engagement with key regulatory bodies. The LMA represents the financing of the EMEA loan, so it is right that we have a seat at the table. As I had mentioned previously, we had the BofE at our March LMA/LSTA event, and I am delighted to host IOSCO at the European June conference in Madrid (final few places remaining – register here).

June will also see us launch our first Securitisation think tank, supported by visits to Brussel to see the ESAs.

Welcome to our nine new members who have joined during May: pan-African investor and developer, Harith General Partners; global energy company, EDP; global investment firm, Carlyle; Emirates Development Bank (EDB);  Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB); and law firms Duale, Ovia & Alex-Adepipe, N. Dowuona & Company, BSMP Bohalteanu & Asociati, and Finway.

Our membership team will be in touch with all your nominated representatives over the coming months to ensure that your contact details are up to date. We appreciate your help with this, and please don’t forget that you can share access to the LMA resources, events and training with any of your colleagues by simply sharing the LMA Registration Link. 