Partner Program

Growing together: how Bridgement partners are boosting SME success

January 2025 • 7m

Jordan Leighton

Head of Partnerships, Bridgement

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Registering as a referral partner with Bridgement is a simple way to invest in the long-term growth and success of your clients’ enterprises, as well as your own. By becoming a referral partner, you can help your clients build their businesses, enhance your professional credibility, and earn generous ongoing commissions on funded clients.

First, let’s explore how Bridgement is changing business funding as you know it.

It’s time to stop viewing business funding like consumer credit

As their role evolves to take on a more advisory capacity, accountants are increasingly responsible for giving sound financial advice to the growing businesses that they serve. With this growing responsibility in mind, it’s easy to see why, for many financial professionals in an advisory position, directing small business owners to take out a credit facility feels counterintuitive to supporting business expansion.

It’s time we changed that.

Many accountants and bookkeepers might advise against taking out business funding for small businesses because we have inherited the idea of debt as a financial burden. However, this perception of debt originates in consumer credit and its less-than-favourable connotations of living beyond one’s means (which is really a product of mismanagement, not the credit card itself). The truth is, in the context of business funding, a line of credit can represent a sustainable method of maintaining cash flow and growing the business. We even wrote an article a while back about why debt is cheaper than equity funding.

There is an important distinction to be made here: when the right kind of business finance solution is used in a controlled and responsible way, debt is an extraordinarily positive and transformative force that propels businesses forward without sacrificing precious savings or cash flow.

This is especially true when small businesses take advantage of alternative funding that is designed specifically for their needs. Bridgement offers obligation-free funding for SMEs to use as and when they need it. We’ve simplified business funding by eliminating all application charges, account fees, and surprise costs. We charge a single, simple fee, and clients will always know the full cost of finance before agreeing to anything.

Bridgement credit facilities are designed in such a way that small businesses can apply for them and keep them in their back pocket — completely free of charge. For many business owners, just the knowledge that there is a fast and flexible safety net already behind them gives them the courage they need to take bigger swings (and see bigger results).

Business funding vs. consumer credit

Consumer credit card	Bridgement credit facility
Includes a one-time initiation fee.	Free to apply (and only takes two minutes online).
Can accumulate rewards points that can be redeemed for gift cards and travel vouchers. Incentivising further spending.	Includes benefits such as early settlement discounts. Rewarding good financial behaviours.
Incurs a recurring monthly fee for maintaining the account, whether the client is making purchases with the card or not.	No monthly fees. Just a single, simple, and 100% transparent fee when the client does decide to withdraw from their approved facility.
Other fees may apply, such as extra charges for cash withdrawals.	You’ll find no fine-print fees here; the cost of finance is clearly and transparently disclosed before the client agrees to anything, whether they’re opening a facility for the first time or making their tenth withdrawal.
Chronic misuse has led to connotations of burdensome debt and living beyond one’s means.	Although more flexible than most traditional lenders, Bridgement carefully assesses a business’s readiness for finance so that we can make a funding decision that protects SMEs in alignment with SASFA guidelines.

Ultimately, even consumer credit gets an undeservedly bad rap. If everyone paid their balances in full every month, films like Confessions of a Shopaholic wouldn’t exist. Debt is a tool for growth; it’s mismanagement that you have to watch out for. With a Bridgement facility, small businesses can enjoy all the financial security that a regular credit card offers savvy consumers, but with much more flexibility and far fewer fees.

In addition to offering alternative financing solutions, Bridgement also offers a partnership program designed to support the mutual growth of small businesses and the trusted accounting professionals who serve them.

Elevate your status as a trusted business advisor with a Bridgement partnership

According to the 2024 Xero State of Small Business Report, 81% of small businesses nominated their accountant or bookkeeper as their most trusted business advisor. Furthermore, the report indicates that the trust-based relationship between accounting professionals and the growing businesses they serve will continue to evolve.

58% of SMEs believe that their accountants will continue to fulfil a more consultative role in the future — a rate that has nearly doubled since 2023. The deepening trust that small businesses place in their financial professionals is a positive sign of the integrity, dependability, and goodwill that accountants uphold as the tenets of their profession.

It’s clear that accounting professionals already occupy an increasingly trusted advisory role in many small businesses, and registering as a referral partner with Bridgement is a strategic way to strengthen this evolving relationship and diversify your standard offerings.

Servicing a higher volume and complexity of client needs helps attain that elusive “stickiness” that forms the foundation of many long and fruitful business relationships. Existing Bridgement partners have already helped connect hundreds of SME clients with business funding.

Not only can you connect your clients with innovative finance solutions that foster the growth of their businesses, but Bridgement partners enjoy a multitude of benefits of their own.

Registering as a certified Bridgement partner can further elevate your status as a trusted partner, which has the obvious benefit of deepening the relationship between you and your current clients while attracting new prospects. However, certified Bridgement partners also enjoy exclusive access to resources, events, and rewards that can help you fuel your professional growth alongside your clients. Additionally, Bridgement partners are free to leverage our partner content to advertise their services to existing and prospective audiences.

How to become a certified Bridgement partner

We’re big believers in simplicity, which is why it’s as straightforward to register as a certified Bridgement partner as it is for your clients to access fast, flexible business finance. To register as a partner, follow these three steps:

Sign up through our quick online registration process. You’ll gain access to a user-friendly Bridgement dashboard, where you can refer clients, track referrals, and monitor commissions. Got questions? Simply reach out to one of our Partnership Managers. We’d love to hear from you.
Refer your clients to us using the unique referral link issued through your Bridgement partner dashboard.
We share generous commissions for each referral that gets funded through their Bridgement facility. You have the option of either keeping it or passing the commission on to your client as a finance discount (which helps with the stickiness we were talking about earlier). If you choose to pass it on as client savings, just let us know when you make the referral and we’ll take it from there.

Bridgement is committed to accelerating the sustainable growth of small businesses in South Africa by simplifying their access to business finance and we’re looking to align with like-minded accounting professionals. Our partners have connected hundreds of SMEs with funding — we’re looking forward to watching that figure grow.

By registering as a referral partner with Bridgement, you are committing to boosting the development of the SMEs in your network and, most importantly, growing together.

About the Author

Jordan Leighton

Head of Partnerships, Bridgement

Jordan is the Head of Partnerships at Bridgement. Having studied a Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) at the University of Pretoria, Jordan went on to work as both a Financial Advisor at Envestpro and a Business Development Manager at TecEx before joining Bridgement. His background in both advisory services, as well as business development, lends Jordan a natural finesse for strategy and a keen eye for identifying growth potential in small businesses, which serve him well in the facilitation of partnerships While no two days look entirely the same for Jordan, a typical day consists of SME outreach and communications, onboarding and clarification of processes for current clients and managing relations with partners who form part of Bridgement’s referral network. Helping prospective and current clients understand the value that Bridgement brings to their businesses and how best to leverage its resources is a key responsibility for Jordan in successful partnership management. He also assists in product innovation, development and implementation. As a small business owner himself, Jordan understands how fundamentally vital cash flow is to secure long-term growth and success. Equally important is the reality of how difficult it is as an SME to acquire this funding and support from traditional banks. Massive amounts of red tape and archaic procedures make it difficult, if not impossible, for smaller businesses to obtain cash flow, particularly if the minimum requirement is higher than what they need. This in-depth awareness and empathy drive Jordan to assist South African SMEs in building successful, lasting growth and development partnerships with Bridgement. Success, to Jordan, is when a client successfully applies for and receives the funding they need without delays or unnecessary complexity, and it’s a goal he’s achieved for more than 250 small businesses to date.