The Working Guide to Fund Finance - Lloyds & Brickfield
•09/09/2026•12 MinutesThe Fund Finance market has evolved rapidly over the last decade. Once viewed as a specialist area largely centred on subscription finance, the sector has expanded into a broad and increasingly sophisticated ecosystem encompassing NAV finance, GP and manager finance, securitisation structures, preferred equity and a growing range of capital solutions for funds and related entities.
Alongside that evolution has come an equally significant challenge: how to train and develop the next generation of fund finance professionals in a market where structures, legal frameworks and client demands are becoming more complex year by year.
How and why the Working Guide was conceived
It was against that backdrop that The Working Guide to Fund Finance was created. Originally the brainchild of Jeremy Cross, London-based partner at Haynes and Boone who serves as consulting editor and author of many of the book’s principal chapters,
Brickfield Recruitment, which took on publishing the book, had long been keenly aware of the need for the Fund Finance industry to improve and formalise its body of technical knowledge, and drew upon its deep relationships with experts across the industry to bring together contributions from leading law firms, lenders, funds, ratings agencies and industry associations, with whom it worked to design a publication that would provide a comprehensive, practitioner-led reference point for the Fund Finance market.
The publication, with its third edition due later this year, covers all major areas of the market, including subscription finance, NAV and asset finance, GP and manager finance and securitisation structures, while also examining jurisdiction-specific considerations across key European and offshore fund domiciles.
In a market where no single consolidated reference source previously existed, The Working Guide has quickly established itself as what many participants now regard as a standard industry resource.
How Lloyds saw an opportunity
For Lloyds, high-quality, multi-faceted learning and development has always been central to the business and to developing the next generation of fund finance professionals. The Working Guide to Fund Finance is an important pillar within that broader training framework, sitting alongside transaction-led experience, internal expertise, senior coaching, legal and credit training, and self-directed learning.
Alongside these resources, Lloyds is also focused on embedding AI into the business and into its learning approach, helping colleagues access, organise and apply technical knowledge more effectively while keeping training grounded in the bank’s own transaction experience, risk discipline and institutional expertise.
Scott Turner, Managing Director in the Financial Sponsors Group at Lloyds, describes the bank’s platform as having grown alongside the evolution of Fund Finance itself.
Having been among the pioneers of the modern fund finance market more than two decades ago, Lloyds today operates a global platform supporting Tier 1 financial sponsors across private equity, private credit, secondaries, infrastructure and real estate from offices in London and New York. “We very much view ourselves as one of the leading fund finance banks globally in terms of track record, through-the-cycle support, scale, innovation and solution delivery for clients.”
According to Turner, one of the defining characteristics of fund finance has been the increasing sophistication of products and structures built around a solutions-based approach to match rapidly evolving client needs.
“While the core principles of fund finance remain relatively unchanged, the breadth of product deployment, the growth in bespoke client solutions and the corresponding range of use cases have grown almost exponentially.”
As products and the range of market participants have evolved, so too have the demands placed on fund finance professionals internally. Alastair Smith, Associate Director in Lloyds’ Fund Finance Portfolio Management team, explains that the increasing complexity of products, structures and legal analysis has made formalised learning and development significantly more important than it was historically. “Structures are becoming more bespoke; the level of legal and risk analysis is evolving constantly, and maintaining a strong understanding of how all of that fits together is fundamental for a market-leading business such as ours,” he says.
Why the Working Guide matters
It was for that reason that Lloyds became closely involved with The Working Guide to Fund Finance, contributing major lender-focused chapters and perspectives to the publication.
Turner says the bank immediately recognised the potential significance of the book. “We see it as being a fundamental industry publication,” he says. “Given our position in the market, we were very keen to be a core part of that, and we’ve seen its usefulness to existing participants, new players wanting to enter the market, junior colleagues and other stakeholders.”
Building a structured learning platform
Internally, Lloyds has gone much further than simply contributing to The Working Guide. The bank has used the publication as one component of a broader internal learning and development programme designed to build capability across products, structures, risk analysis, legal frameworks and client solutions.
Smith describes the publication as a “highly commercial and genuinely practitioner-grounded” resource available to the fund finance market. “Having key articles grounded in commercial logic, structures and mechanics, written by people who have been practising in the industry for decades, is incredibly valuable.”
Rather than relying solely on traditional apprenticeship-style learning through deal exposure and ad hoc legal training, Lloyds has sought to create a more consistent training framework. “What we’ve done, with the help of AI, is pull together a structured, progressive and modular curriculum that colleagues can work through, drawing on a range of resources, internal expertise and practical transaction experience. The Working Guide is a core pillar of that, helping to ensure that by the time colleagues encounter deal complexity, the conceptual foundations are already in place,” Smith explains.
“We are using AI to organise knowledge, develop training content and connect external market resources with the bank’s own institutional expertise and transaction examples. This helps keep the programme practical, current and scalable as the market evolves,” Smith says.
Offering multiple avenues for learning
Lloyds’ approach to training and knowledge-sharing is designed to give colleagues multiple ways to learn and develop, reflecting both the complexity of the fund finance market and the different ways in which people build expertise.
Smith notes that this includes face-to-face training, deal-specific learning, senior guidance and structured materials that colleagues can work through at their own pace. “The aim is to create a comprehensive learning framework to support deeper self-development and consistent access to knowledge across the team,” he says.
Bernardo Ferreira, CFA, part of Lloyds’ Fund Finance team, echoes that view, noting that structured resources can be particularly helpful for colleagues looking to build their technical understanding alongside live transaction experience.
“The Working Guide is a valuable resource because it gives colleagues another way to deepen their understanding of the evolving structures and legal frameworks our clients require,” he says. “It supports self-development and complements the guidance, coaching and transaction-led learning that remain central to how we develop people across the team.”
Investing in the next generation
Ultimately, Lloyds views investment in structured learning as part of a broader long-term commitment to talent development. As the fund finance market continues to expand in scale and complexity, the need for structured, practitioner-led knowledge transfer is likely to become increasingly important across the industry.
For Lloyds, The Working Guide to Fund Finance is therefore not the training programme in isolation. It is one important pillar within a broader platform that combines live transaction experience, senior guidance, structured technical learning, self-development resources and AI-enabled knowledge management to develop confident, commercially minded fund finance professionals.
Scott Turner says this breadth is central to Lloyds’ approach. “The market will continue to evolve, and our responsibility is to ensure our people have the technical foundations, commercial judgement and tools they need to support clients with confidence. The Working Guide is an important part of that, but its real value comes from how we use it alongside live deal experience, senior coaching and disciplined knowledge-sharing across the platform.”
Brickfield is the leading Fund Finance recruitment specialist
Brickfield Recruitment is the only talent acquisition service dedicated to the full Fund Finance sector inclusive of lenders, asset managers, legal, and advisory ecosystems. Our in-depth knowledge of the fund finance market, complemented by a diligent and discreet personal approach, gives us an unparalleled ability to bring the right people together.
We listen, we advise, we match.
Brickfield Recruitment works with leading financial institutions in sourcing the very best fund finance talent. If you are interested in finding out more contact Rory Smith at Brickfield Recruitment on +44 7800 963 594 or at rory@brickfieldrecruitment.com.
