I would imagine 2010 to see much of the same with one factoring company about to be taken over which I guess will be the first of several in the coming year.

However tough the market there never seems to be a shortage of people clamouring to get into it. Whilst some do it as they need to provide themselves with an income and they see the setting up and running a factoring company as the route to do that others have a genuine desire to be in the business. Santander comes into the latter category and with many of the country’s best loved names now part of the group one can hardly blame them even if they chose a most unusual way of doing so. There is also another new factoring company to be launched shortly which I have no doubt should be successful as there are no pressures there to take on business at all costs as seems to be the case with several of the more recent newcomers.

One of my hobby horses over the year has been the plethora of awards handed out to all and sundry with almost everyone being able to claim some sort of award for being the best factoring and discounting company of the year and as if to round off the year nicely a press release landed on the blog’s desk from Business Moneyfacts announcing a forthcoming event to “celebrate the best products and service in the business and commercial finance world”

The nominations for “Best Factoring & Invoice Discounting Provider” are:-

Absolute Invoice Finance
Bibby Financial Services
Close Invoice Finance Limited
Credit Agricole Commercial Finance
IGF Invoice Finance Limited
Venture Finance PLC

I have no idea who decides on the nominations or even how much they know about the marketplace but it always seems to be the same old companies that are nominated and the one thing that most have in common is their love of self promotion.

Of this year’s nominations Absolute Invoice Finance and their clients must have wondered if they would see out the end of the year as the previous parent Cattles were in such a parlous state whilst Close and Venture seem between them to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of the complaints that one regularly reads about on forums and blogs around the country.

IGF Invoice Finance is a company that has been top of many people’s lists of “who won’t be around this time next year” for the last two years and there are still mutterings in the marketplace about them.

That leaves just Bibby and what was Eurofactor and I freely admit that I don’t know much about the latter.

I wonder why these companies don’t approach me for a list of nominations

.

Th company’s staff must be wondering quite what to make of this announcement as they had just been called to a staff meeting during which they were told that the company was looking for volunteers for redundancy as 20 staff were to be chopped.

It was an interesting concept starting off with an online application form but it would appear that the applicants / clients were of poor quality and the whole concept was causing too many problems and losses so had to end.

Where are the companies who have been turned down by everyone else going to go now

First off was an email from Skipton Business Finance by way of an introduction to the writer in which he stated that “There has been a lot of positive changes to personnel within SBF over the last 12 months which has lead us to achieve the ‘UK Factoring & Invoice Discounting Provider of the year award 2009’ at the ACQ Global Awards 2009″ I wasn’t quite sure how to take the bit about the fact that it was the positive changes to personnel that lead to the award as I’m not sure if it meant that they had got rid of the people that stopped them getting the award in the past or had employed a factoring superhero or two.

The second email was from Venture Finance to tell me that they had been voted winners yet again of a prestigious award but I’m afraid that I can’t remember which as I accidentally deleted the email.

The third was a slightly unusual press release as it was from Oriel Collections who were jumping the gun a bit as they hadn’t actually won anything but had been short listed for “Commercial Credit Team of the Year” in the Credit Today awards.

Interestingly enough one of the three companies mentioned above has a terrible reputation in the industry for service and Factoring Solutions has received quite a few enquiries from it’s disgruntled clients in the past but there again I don’t suppose that winning an award actually has much to do with service anyway.

The shortlist for “Factor & Discounter of the Year” for the Credit Today awards comprises the following luminaries – Ashley Commercial Finance, Bibby Financial Services, Cattles Invoice Finance,  HSBC Bank and Venture Finance. It makes me wonder how a company manages to get itself shortlisted for such an award. The staff and clients of Cattles haven’t known whether or not they were coming or going in the past few months whilst HSBC have been keeping selected brokers in champagne by offloading clients that they decided no longer fit their new criteria.

I will make the same comment that I made last time I wrote about silly season that the two factoring companies I use most of all have service levels far higher than most coupled with competitive pricing and unlike at least one of the factoring companies mentioned above are still actively looking for business yet neither of them has ever won diddly squat.

It’s a strange world

We were approached by a company last week that was looking for a factoring facility and having read our website they were interested in our recommendations. The MD mentioned that he had already approached Cattles Invoice Finance on the basis that they were award winners to which my response was that almost all factoring companies were award winners somewhere or another.

Looking at the factoring and invoice discounting companies’ website I noticed that Cattles were proudly proclaiming to have won the Business Innovation of the Year award at the National Business Awards’ North West regional finals.

Moving onto Close Invoice Finance and they are claiming the Business Moneyfacts Best Factoring and Invoice Discounting Provider award for the third year running whilst Venture Finance are the winners of the Credit Today Factor Discounter of the Year for the second year running.

Perhaps the most amusing website is that of Bibby Factors where they are proud of the fact that they were voted best factor and discounter by NACFB 2003 2004 2005 2006 thus prompting the question “What happened in 2007 then”

In addition to the above I went to the annual Dealmakers Dinner late last year which included an awards ceremony and GE Commercial Finance managed to win the Dealmakers Asset Based Lending award of the year.

I have no doubt that the clearing bank factors have also won a shelf full of awards between them as I seem to recall that Lloyds TSB was the victor at the Dealmakers Dinner in the previous year.

Oddly enough we introduced the prospective client that started me thinking about awards to one of the few factoring companies that doesn’t seem to have won an award at all even though they consistantly offer an above average service at competitive rates.

Venture Finance remains part of the ABN Amro group which in turn is now owned by the Dutch Government so we are pleased to see that their foundation is now secure.

The current edition of the glossy magazine Business Money has a full colour cover devoted to Landsbanki which will no doubt continue to be an embarrassment to it’s editor until the next edition comes out whilst Venture Finance sent out a press release on 25th September telling the world about the new larger premises that they were moving into on 1st October in order to facilitate the integration of all the extra people upon their integration with Fortis. This was less than two weeks before the announcement that Fortis was being nationalised and the integration would now no longer be going ahead.

Ian