Becoming a more representative voice

As I mentioned at our recent AGM, the Board of the APB is currently looking to develop much closer ties with the wider property industry. As you may be aware, the APB is already represented on the Bank of England and RICS Property Forums, together with various governmental industry working parties. We fully intend to keep up our participation in these pan industry discussion forums and indeed feel that we should look at widening our brief and establish ourselves as the recognised industry point of contact for all property banking issues that arise. We therefore seek to become more of a representative voice. In this regard, it would be very helpful to have members' views on the following issues:-

• Is it a reasonable objective for the APB to be one of the primary contact points/spokesperson for the UK commercial property finance market?
• The APB's membership structure is based on individual members rather than corporate (i.e. bank) members - do you think it should stay that way going forward?
• Do you think that the APB is adequately representative of the UK commercial property finance sector with over 300 members from almost 60 different lending organisations?
• Would you support more formal links with the other professional bodies within the UK property finance industry? If so, would you like to get involved in this initiative?

I should make it clear that the APB is not going to change any of its existing objectives and the educational and networking focus that we have had previously will continue.

I would welcome any comments you have before the end of November.