As an credible independent invoice finance broker we were recently approached by a business having trouble obtaining funding from their high street bank. The business mainly exported goods to Europe and Africa had access to a £3.0m invoice discounting facility. As most of the African debt could be credit insured it had always been possible to obtain funding against these outstanding invoices. That was until the bank had a change of policy.
At a review meting the bank announced that they would no longer be able to finance the African invoices. A change of policy apparently. The customer during 15 years of trading had never had a bad debt into Africa and in any case most of the debtors could be credit insured. This obviously had a dramatic affect on the businesses cash flow and as such the £250k in case of need overdraft facility quickly reached its limit.
In our opinion a switch from one high street bank to another would certainly be out of the frying pan and into the fire. We therefore introduced our customer to a couple of lessor known invoice discounting ccompanies that specialise in bigger deals. They kind of start off where the high street banks start getting uncomfortable. They tend to be owned by foreign banks however unlike invoice discounting companies attached to high street banks they have their own autonomy. In addition because they are foreign owned they tend to be able to deal with world wide markets.
It is always worth getting an alternative to a high street bank and a good independent finance broker will undoubtedly be able to point you in the right direction
