Dear Members,
Welcome to 2025.
It is too late in the month to wish you success and happiness in 2025 but I do want to express my excitement at working with you all over the coming 12 months and continuing to drive our markets forward.
Since the last member update most of our activity has been planning out the specifics around the strategy for 2025. Specifically, this has covered events, hiring, and member engagement. I will cover each in turn.
Firstly, events.
Currently, we have a calendar of 25 events either confirmed or planned for 2025. While the number will be less than previous years, again what you will see is an increase in depth and breadth where we increase quality and content. We will supplement these events with more smaller engagements either for product or geography. We will cover Middle East, Sustainable Finance, CRI/SRT, and Benelux in our events agenda. Also, we are launching monthly member breakfasts, and I would like to engage with and speak to as many of our members as possible to hear their perspectives and amplify their voices. These sessions will be allocated randomly, with the goal of covering LMA delivery, expectations, and member needs.
As part of partnership with DealCatalyst, we hosted the Fund Finance event on the 28th with more than 500+ senior leaders from across the fund finance spectrum in attendance. The Private Credit event in Abu Dhabi will be taking place in February. Check out the event calendar and start saving your dates.
Already in 2025 we have managed to onboard two new hires – Emma Norman, Chief of Staff and Anne Hogarth, Membership Director. We have also onboarded a consultancy to further strengthen our regulatory work and have two other hires planned over the quarter. These will allow us to deliver more for you and add some additional expertise to our current roster.
Sadly, Nick Voisey one of the doyens of the LMA has announced his retirement. He will be missed, but with nearly twenty years at the LMA, and as one of the early board members, there will remain a core legacy of his work supporting and building out the loan markets across EMEA. I am sure you will have opportunities over the coming months to say your own farewells.
Both the events and the hiring will help to increase our member engagement. On the latter, one key outcome will be improving the quality of our member data and from that increase penetration and impact with you all. Success will be development of all member persona types and utilisation of these to identify precision on distribution lists, event mapping, and who should support our working groups.
I trust you will have recognised the increased output from our great comms team. I was particularly pleased with our work on Fund Finance including the launch of the Fund Finance intelligence survey in collaboration with The Drawdown and the Glossary of Terms and the recent blog on Documentation. All of these are so on point regarding the goals of the LMA, and this was reflected in key metrics around engagement and popularity.
In addition to our blogs, our Spotify channel has been popular too. We covered multiple topics in our podcasts including eBLs, Fund Finance, LMA Outlook, LMEs and Green Finance. Please reach out to us with your ideas also – what would you like us to cover?
We published the Draft Provisions for Green Loans in November and published the Green Loan Terms early January for which we have been shortlisted for the Legal 500 ESG Awards 2025.
There are two significant regulatory consultations in flight which I will update you on in the next letter. One is concerning NBFIs and the other Loan Originating Funds. We have been working with our members to consolidate our overall response due over Feb and March.
We are still on track to launch our free version of LMA Automate in April, in tandem with our updated Documentation Portal. I am looking forward to both the utilisation of Automate but more importantly an improved customer journey and experience for you.
Our LMA Academy Learning will also be launched in Q1 building out on the current E-Learning. We are also working to add additional online courses and training through the quarter and I am very optimistic around the incremental benefits brought to you all from this.
On the member side, the team has been working incredibly hard processing renewals and answering many queries. We have already received over 600 renewals. For those still to pay we do appreciate there may be some administrative challenges but early payment allows us to continue grant you uninterrupted benefits.
So, a relatively light note for you all as we start 2025. We have a lot to do but with your ongoing support I am confident about our joint successes through 2025.
Best regards,
Scott McMunn
Chief Executive Officer
Loan Market Association
