WITH “sub-prime” now seen by many as a dirty phrase, you would expect all lenders in the sector to be lying low.

But Norman Beaumont, boss of specialist sub-prime car retailer and finance arranger ACF Car Finance, says he is proud of the way his firm still fills a niche in the market.

The Chester company sells cars to people who can otherwise not access credit by arranging finance plans for them.

The credit crunch was sparked in 2007 by a crisis in the US sub-prime mortgage market, when repossessions soared and banks found the values of their mortgage portfolios plummeting.

But Beaumont says that, away from the mortgage market, responsible sub-prime lending is still in demand.

And he says the sub-prime market is growing, thanks to the credit crunch, as banks continue to restrict their lending to individuals, meaning more people need to look for less mainstream funding options.

He said: “The problem we’ve got currently is that sub-prime has become a dirty expression, with everything that’s come across the Atlantic.

“But it’s a specialist marketplace for customers who cannot raise funds via mainstream financial plans.

“They cannot go to a bank to borrow £5,000 to buy a car. They could go to a specialist loan provider to get a loan, but their APR would be colossally higher than our proposition.