A lack of cash liquidity and tightening lending parameters at banks are forcing businesses to explore other equipment attaining options.Leasing enquiries recently have been on the increase at Elderslie Finance Corporation, a targeted lessor to the SME market. "What I would also say is helping leasing is that businesses, up until the recent credit crunch, have had a lot of cash so they have been buying assets," said James Garrett, chief executive officer at Elderslie."So with liquidity tightening up and cash disappearing, for us we are seeing a benefit out of that."Garrett said it's difficult to identify trends in the customer base in recent times, and points to a reduction in competitors as another reason why enquiry levels have increased."I think we are seeing a higher level of enquiries purely due to fewer competitors. A couple of our competitors have gone broke."Customer defaults have been on the increase, but more due to New South Wales' sluggish economy than the recent credit tightening."In the last couple of years, for everybody out there, there has been a tendency to suffer some higher bad debt provisioning."With states like NSW and Victoria which are not booming compared to the rest of the country, business conditions have been a bit flat for a couple of years."Garrett adds that the majority of Elderslie revenue is derived from NSW and Victoria, and to a lesser extent Queensland with a small exposure to Western Australia.With the shifting business environment, customer lease choices have also shifted."There was a move away from operating leases, which we also call rental, towards finance lease and hire purchase."Garrett says the brokers selling the lease generally dictate which type of lease a customer will use."What we are seeing going forward is more of an interest back in the operating lease product. We think that may be partly due to a lot of businesses, as they become tighter with cash and because of their borrowing covenants with the banks, finding that operating leases are usually a better product to manage those covenants."Our preference is always to see as much operating lease as possible, so we are happy to see that develop."Finance brokers account for up to three quarters of all Elderslie leases.