About us

Our heritage

As a 35-year-old business, we’ve learnt a few things about car finance in our time.  When Richard Hoggart, our CEO, started working for his family-owned dealer group back in 1988, he saw the potential in making car finance more accessible.

Whilst starting out as a lender to our dealer group, we quickly understood that in order to make a more meaningful impact in the market, it was time to pivot and transition into a broker.

Back in the late 80’s, demand for car finance was similar to what you see today, although unfortunately for customers, access to a wide range of lenders just wasn’t there. As the UKs first national car finance broker formed in 1989, DSG were on a mission to change that.  We built a national sales force, spearheaded by our Chief Revenue Officer, Mark Gow and we forged relationships with multiple lenders that gave our dealers access to more lending options in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

But it wasn’t just about bridging the gap between lenders and borrowers. Investing in pioneering technology has always been our core belief, and for over 30 years, we’ve been early adopters. From what felt like ground-breaking advancements at the time, such as Blackberry’s that facilitated on-the-go proposal updates, to more fundamental technology that has underpinned our business growth, like our in-house developed point-of-sales and proposal management systems, we have always embraced the integral role that technology plays in car finance.

On this exciting and challenging journey, we have traded through economic cycles, a global pandemic, witnessed lenders enter and exit the market and more importantly seen several regulatory changes. And it’s through this experience that we’ve been able to grow and shape our business into what it is today.

Since 2016, we’ve made an important gear shift by welcome institutional investment from Edinburgh based private equity firm Promethean Investments and Chicago based US Credit fund Magnetar Capital, both of which have helped us scale our broker and lending divisions.

As a result, we’re now the largest hybrid car finance lender-broker in the UK.  Through our highly experienced people and technology, we are unwavering in our mission to help our franchised, independent and prestige dealers, as well as direct customers, get the best possible outcomes through our extensive panel of lenders – including our own ethical car finance lending brand.  Whatever a customer’s circumstance; we make it our job to find a solution.