Lenders' ForumThe forum for the people who run UK consumer lending
Now in its eighth year, the Forum has become one of the few places senior lending professionals go to compare notes with people who are solving the same problems.
Eight years in, the Forum still runs on one rule: members set the agenda, not us.
We launched the UK Lenders' Forum with PCL in July 2018 because the lending peer groups on offer at the time were either thinly disguised sales pitches or too generic to be worth a lending exec's afternoon. Now in its eighth year, the Forum has become one of the few places senior lending professionals go to compare notes with people who are solving the same problems, without a vendor in the room steering the conversation.
Optima and PCL run the Forum day to day to keep it independent and impartial. Where it's useful, we bring in subject-matter experts, but the agenda is built by members, for members.
Due to our partnership with FIS Total Issuing Solutions, attendance is free of charge.
What members actually get
The topics are chosen by the members who'll be sitting in the room, and the format forces a real discussion rather than a set of vendor presentations.
Rapid benchmarking, not a static report
Members compare practices and strategy against direct peers in close to real time, so decisions get made on current thinking rather than a survey from eighteen months ago. Peer comparisons happen fast enough to influence decisions still being made, not ones already signed off.
Access to people who know the subject, not just the room
Sessions draw on facilitators with both strategic and operational lending experience, so the discussion goes beyond what's already on LinkedIn. Subject-matter experts are brought in to sharpen the debate, not to replace it.
Data with the noise taken out
The agenda is shaped by member input and what's actually moving in the industry that quarter, not a fixed template rolled out every year.
We act as the trusted third party in any benchmarking exercise: anonymising and normalising submissions, validating results, and adding the analysis so members get an interpretation, not a spreadsheet.
A network worth having
Time is built in specifically for members to compare notes with peers outside the formal agenda. Members build relationships with peers who are, in most cases, tackling the exact same regulatory, technology, or consumer-behaviour problem that quarter.
Anti-competitive discussion is off the table by design; the value here is shared practice and market context, not price-fixing dressed up as networking.
Who’s in the room.
Membership is invitation-only and free of charge. We cap it at two members per organisation and encourage the same individual or team to attend each time, because continuity is what makes the benchmarking sharpen quarter on quarter rather than reset each time.
Members hold senior strategic, commercial, or finance roles in lending: Head of Lending, Head or Director of Cards, Head of Product, Head of Risk, and equivalent titles.
Current and past members span the market, from established high-street names to some of the newest entrants in UK lending.
Next session
Date: Tuesday 6th October 2026
Venue: London
Running order:
12.00 Networking lunch
Session 1
Networking break
Session 2
16.30 Wrap up and close
Get in touch
Membership is by invitation, but if you're interested in joining and want to help shape the next agenda, we'd like to hear from you.