SHERMIN FINANCE: Unlocking Household Ability to Play in Energy Transition
By offering carefully curated finance solutions for consumers to upgrade their homes with renewable energy tech, Shermin Finance is becoming a vital intermediary for both retailers and lenders. Managing Director Gareth Weaver tells Energy Focus that the company’s new Stax platform is being rolled out at scale for the benefit of the wider energy transition.
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The UK’s energy transition is not short of ambition. Targets are clear, technologies are proven, and consumer appetite is growing. Yet between intent and installation lies a stubborn barrier: funding. Solar panels, heat pumps and battery systems are no longer niche purchases, but they remain significant investments for households. Without accessible, transparent finance, the shift to low-carbon homes slows to a crawl.
Shermin Finance has set itself squarely in that gap. Established in 1976, the business has evolved from a traditional finance broker into a specialist facilitator of funding for home improvement and renewable energy technologies. Through its Stax platform, it connects retailers of solar, air source heat pumps and storage systems with a panel of vetted lenders, enabling end customers to spread the cost of installations that can easily run into five figures.
Managing Director Gareth Weaver joined the business nearly three years ago with a mandate to modernise and scale. “We introduce retailers to lenders, and we manage those relationships giving the retailers the ability to offer finance packages to their customers so they can afford solar panels, air source heat pumps, and many other products.”
It is a simple description of a complex task. Consumer finance in the renewables sector has been dogged by poor practice, weak oversight and, in some cases, outright miss-selling.
“I’ve been with the company for almost three years, and I joined as Commercial Director to help the company grow. We have been going since 1976, so we are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year,” he smiles.
However, longevity can be both strength and constraint. “The business has been doing things almost the same way for 46 of those years. It is a traditional business, and I came in to help modernise and bring it into the 21st century.”
That need for change was clear with historic roots deep in home improvement. “The business was struggling to scale, and I came in to help achieve that scale,” he explains. “I have spent nearly 20 years in consumer finance and have worked across big banking groups, fintech startups, and specialist scale-up funding companies. Having put together the plan I moved into the role of Managing Director.”
The result is a business that now defines itself as a specialist intermediary in both the home improvement and renewable technology market, seeking out lending partners committed to driving the energy transition forward alongside retailers that are tried and tested in the UK market.
Interview with Gareth Weaver, Managing Director
PLATFORM POWER
At the centre of that transformation sits Stax, Shermin’s proprietary platform designed to remove friction between retailers and lenders. Barney Goodman, Change and Technology Director and product owner of Stax explains: “It is our USP. It started life as Shermin Max and did what it needed to do, but it needed serious investment. Waterfall decisioning has always been at the heart of it, so applications cascade across lenders automatically, but we’ve now rebuilt the platform on AWS and made the whole journey faster for retailers and their customers. Since its creation, over 600 retailers have used Stax, we’ve processed more than 220,000 customer loan applications and facilitated over £740 million in loan originations. We currently have six lenders on the platform with a target of ten by the end of the year.”
For many retailers, particularly smaller solar and heat pump installers, managing finance relationships can be onerous. One lender means limited choice; multiple lenders mean additional administration, compliance checks and reporting burdens. Stax seeks to address these issues.
“The platform allows retailers to manage multiple lenders through a single integration,” says Goodman. “Typically, a retailer will have one lender and that is all they deal with because managing more gets complicated fast. Stax changes that. Our waterfall decisioning means that if a customer isn’t accepted by one lender, the application automatically moves to the next, no re-keying, no delays, no friction. We can match on rate, acceptance criteria, product availability, whatever gets the best outcome for the customer. That’s what removes the barriers for retailers.”
The timing is critical. According to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, improving the energy performance of homes is essential if the UK is to meet its net zero commitments, yet policy inconsistency and funding gaps have repeatedly slowed progress. At the same time, data from the HomeOwners Alliance suggests that while energy-efficient upgrades can add value and deliver returns over time, upfront costs remain a key deterrent for households.
Goodman is equally clear about the economics. “This is not cheap kit. Typical solar panels with batteries in a typical three- or four-bedroom house costs the best part of £10,000 right now. Customers just don’t have that sort of money laying around doing nothing. It’s the equivalent of buying a decent second-hand car, and finance is readily available in that market, but it is not in the renewables sector.”
The comparison is telling. Car finance is embedded, well understood and widely promoted. Renewable technology finance, by contrast, has been fragmented and at times poorly governed. Shermin’s approach is to professionalise and standardise that environment, drawing on the leadership team’s deep experience of navigating sector turbulence.
HARD LESSONS
“In my previous position, the company I was with had lent a lot in the renewables space. When the solar market imploded on itself and the Feed-in Tariffs were reduced and finally removed, the company was inundated with complaints, and I spent two years working with the FCA and the ombudsman to help remediate all of the issues that had caused customer problems,” Weaver remembers.
That withdrawal of Feed-in Tariffs exposed structural weaknesses in parts of the market. Installations were sold on the back of optimistic projections; some lenders were underprepared for the regulatory and reputational fallout. For Weaver, the episode was formative.
“While that was a painful experience, I learned a lot. I bought that with me, and we now have one the largest panel of lenders in the UK that all support the renewables market. Some of the lenders we have bought in only work with us because of our knowledge of the sector and we are passionate about getting more lenders into the space because of the potential we see – not just from a business point of view but from a planet perspective. We need to get this right as a country,” he reiterates.
That sense of national imperative runs through Shermin’s operating model. Beyond simply matching retailers and lenders, the business has embedded layers of oversight designed to reduce risk and protect consumers.
“It is absolutely getting better,” Weaver says with hope. “We are working alongside retailer and lenders, but I also work with the National Independent Consumer Organisation (NICO) which exist to protect consumers as one of the Charities Trustees. We outsource our remediation to ensure that our customers are fully protected, we work with the likes of EPVS to ensure that any calculations around savings and benefits from a solar panel or heat loss calculations around an air source heat pump are correct, and we really try to mitigate any errors in sale. These are complex products that require a lot of information and calculations to understand the benefits.”
The emphasis on compliance is central to Shermin’s pitch. In a sector still shaking off reputational damage, credibility is currency. Weaver’s insistence on robust lender panels, accurate savings projections and third-party verification reflects a belief that scale is only sustainable if underpinned by trust.
CULTURAL SHIFT
The trust culture that is now embedded extends beyond internal teams. It encompasses retailers, lenders and the broader ecosystem that surrounds renewable installations. “We make sure this mindset runs through everything that we do. The end consumer can buy from a Shermin approved retailer with confidence that the retailer will do a good job,” states Weaver.
To support that confidence, Shermin has invested in its own capabilities. “We have a lot of capability in house. My team owns the Stax platform end-to-end,” Goodman explains. “We work with development partners but the product direction and architecture sits with us. That means we can move quickly when we need to make enhancements or integrate new lenders. We also work with quality and assurance companies to verify product claims, and we have insurance-backed remediation cover in place if retailers run into difficulties. Combined with a strong lender panel, that gives everyone in the chain confidence.”
The architecture is deliberate: robust technology to streamline processes, third-party assurance to validate claims, structured remediation to handle disputes, and a curated lender panel to maintain standards. For retailers, particularly those focused on technical delivery rather than finance administration, this ecosystem reduces complexity. For lenders, it offers confidence that originations meet regulatory and quality thresholds. And for the wider energy transition, it promotes ongoing progress.
The ambition now is growth. “The Stax platform is ready to scale. Over 600 retailers have used it since launch and we want to grow that significantly. The technology is proven, the lender panel is strong, and the market demand is only going one way,” says Goodman.
Expanding the retailer base further would significantly extend Shermin’s reach across the UK’s home improvement and renewables market. With £740 million in loan originations already facilitated, the platform has proven its ability to unlock installations by making finance simpler and more accessible at the point of sale.
TRANSITION FINANCE
The broader question is whether the UK can accelerate residential decarbonisation without a step change in consumer finance. Parliamentary scrutiny has repeatedly highlighted the scale of the retrofit challenge. Millions of homes require upgrades to insulation, heating systems and on-site generation if carbon budgets are to be met. Grants and incentives can catalyse demand, but they rarely cover full costs.
That leaves a funding gap best filled by private capital, deployed responsibly. Shermin’s model, aligning vetted retailers with compliant lenders through a transparent platform, is an attempt to channel that capital efficiently.
Weaver’s experience of past missteps in the solar boom has informed a cautious but determined approach. There is no appetite for rapid expansion at the expense of oversight. Instead, the focus is on building a network where each party understands its obligations and where the end customer is protected.
As households weigh the case for investing in solar panels, batteries or heat pumps, the decision often hinges on affordability. If finance can be presented clearly, competitively and without hidden pitfalls, uptake is more likely to follow. In that sense, Shermin’s work sits quietly but centrally behind the scenes of a widespread household contribution to the energy transition.
The technologies may capture headlines, and policy may set direction, but without structured, ethical finance, installations stall. By modernising a 50-year-old broker, embedding compliance into its DNA and scaling a cloud-based platform built for complexity, Shermin Finance is positioning itself as a steady enabler of change. In a market where trust has been hard won and easily lost, that steadiness may prove as valuable as any innovation.