Hugh Swandel, president of Meridian One Cap Credit, has been a steadying hand for the equipment finance industry at a time of global trade friction, increased fraud and rapid technology advancements.
As the new chair of the Canadian Finance and Leasing Association, Swandel is guiding 200-plus equipment, vehicle and asset-based lenders — as well as his own company — through challenges and industry shifts.
Named president of Meridian OneCap in 2019, Swandel brings a wealth of leadership experience to the CFLA. He is the founder of Swandel and Associates, a consulting firm serving equipment and asset-based finance industries, and he was the senior managing director for the Alta Group in Canada before joining Meridian. He is also a former board member and president of the National Equipment Finance Association.
As president of Meridian, one of the largest credit unions in Canada, Swandel is committed to helping small and medium-sized businesses with customized leasing and financing solutions, working closely with dealers and manufacturers.
His leadership at Meridian and the CFLA comes amid rising trade tensions between the United States and Canada, with the two imposing 25% tariffs on each other for imported steel, aluminum and auto products, for example.
Swandel recently shared his approach to navigating trade challenges, fraud and technology adoption with Equipment Finance News. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.
Equipment Finance News: What are your top priorities for the CFLA over the next 12 months?
Hugh Swandel: The biggest thing is judging the impacts of the tariffs. I know it’s big news in the U.S., but it’s bigger news in Canada because we are the United States’ single-largest trading partner, or have been in the past, and we have very integrated economies.
With the tariffs, you have to recalibrate the whole business. What is the price of equipment? Half of the equipment financed in Canada comes from the U.S., so if we put 25% tariffs on it, or if the U.S. puts 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum, those are all input costs.
I think the association is trying to help members stay calm, and we’ve all been through different cycles over our careers. We all work in the equipment finance business, regardless of what’s going on politically.
EFN: What other strategic initiatives are top of mind for you as you navigate the role?
HS: We’re all trying to stay very coordinated on what’s going on with fraud, and we’ve seen an increased focus on defrauding equipment finance companies. We’re sharing a lot more information. We want to continue to build out a system for helping members detect fraud.
Reporting requirements are also a focus. The regulation already in play in the states related to anti-money laundering was kind of rammed into Canadian policy back in April, partially in response to an American request for stronger borders. We’ve never been regulated to this degree on equipment finance transactions, so that’s taking a lot of resources and time to help members.
On a more positive side, with AI and the shift to a lot more data-driven decisions and prediction modeling, I think it’s one of the most interesting times ever. The ability to reinvent ourselves — to compress our processing time, to be leaner, more accurate, more disciplined and create a better customer experience — that’s some really juicy stuff.
EFN: What measures can equipment finance leaders take to help small businesses in the wake of economic uncertainty and rising new equipment prices?
HS: The biggest thing I’ve noticed is those small, medium-sized businesses are expecting more and more of that consumer-like tech experience. If customers go into Best Buy or Walmart, or if they’re on a website buying a plane ticket, they can pay in installments.
That same consumer owns a small business, and they want and need that kind of speed because they’re entrepreneurs. They want to get their equipment, land their contracts and put it to work. Deploying capital with speed while managing risk, that’s definitely at the forefront of what we’re trying to keep doing.
EFN: As technology and AI reshape financing models, what are the biggest challenges and opportunities on the road to digital transformation?
HS: I really see two different zones of risk. For one, there’s much less risk in our ability to leverage AI technology to automate processes, to read documents using unstructured data.
Most of us have been using machine learning-based decisioning and robotic processing for many years. But now, it’s like you put rocket fuel in there and virtually anybody in your organization could develop an agentic AI tool that could eliminate a lot of process work. The challenge and the risk is how do you govern that? How do you prioritize the right projects that save you the most time and are low-hanging fruit?
The second bucket of risk is the quality of prediction that might be made on a credit approval or a funding decision. These machines are learning at a rapid pace. Their quality of decision, quality of result, is getting better and better, but you still have to supervise that work. You can improve the quality of decisions by supervising with talented people, and that improvement is permanent.
EFN: What is your overall outlook for the equipment finance industry in 2026?
HS: Free trade was looked upon very favorably for the past 30 years under the current (North American) trade agreement. Everybody’s done well by it, but it’s up for renegotiation in 2026.
So, this uncertainty is our biggest challenge in 2026. Business owners don’t like to put their money down and take on debt when they’re not sure which way the economy is going. And unfortunately, we all have to just learn to live with that because I don’t see that changing in 2026, and I don’t think we’ll have certainty for another two, three years.
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