I had two telephone calls yesterday enquiring about factoring.
The first was a recruitment company who had a funding and back office facility with a back office funding company that I had never heard of but who had been causing them problems for a while with their poor service which was why they were now looking to change.
I don’t really like these back office companies that obtain their funding by “refactoring” with a proper factoring company as not only does the client lose part of their identity but also any problems suffered by the funder can filter down to the client whether the fault is theirs or that of another client.
This particular funder registered a charge to RBS Invoice Finance six years ago but six months later that charge was satisfied and a further charge granted to Bank of Scotland.
Two and half years later that charge was satisfied and a further charge registered to Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance but that only lasted nine months until the business transferred to Leumi ABL where it remained until transferring yet again to Close Brothers eighteen months ago.
Hardly a steady business relationship and the big red flag at Companies House stating that the Annual Return is overdue doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence either.
I suggested that the company might be better off utilising the services of one of the factoring companies that ran their own payroll services so there was no hidden middleman to potentially upset the apple cart and that would also have another positive advantage that the company would regain their own identity instead of being subsumed into the funding company’s own identity but the lady that was talking to me decided that she didn’t want to operate that way and was happy as she was but would prefer a different funding company.
It was fairly obvious by the conversation that she wasn’t the decision maker but was happy with the way that things worked currently and didn’t want to work with a proper factoring company.
Fortunately I’m too long in the tooth to have to argue with someone who clearly thinks she knows best so I ended up telling her that regretfully I couldn’t help her.
A couple of hours later I had another call from someone looking for a factoring company who wanted to know what my charges were. I explained that I was a broker and my job was to source the most suitable factoring company for his particular needs and there would be no charge for doing that to which he replied that he wanted to contact factoring companies direct and didn’t wish to use a broker. I wished him good luck in sorting the wheat from the chaff and finding himself a factoring company that performed as well as they claimed and ended another unproductive call.
Hopefully today might bring enquiries from people who aren’t quite so set in their ways and might listen to someone who knows what he talking about