A moral dilemma

I have been approached by a company who complained about the service that they were receiving from their factoring company and who asked me to find them a replacement. It would seem that the factor was being very strict on concentration limits and wouldn’t fund more than £30,000 on their major customer whereas they were trading at £70,000 per month with them. When discussing the creditworthiness of the customer the chap told me that they would never not pay their bills as they were actually silent shareholders in his company.

There were three possible ways to play this as I could have tried to find him another factoring company without disclosing to them that the major debtor was an associate and earned myself a nice commission in the process or else I could have told him that no factoring company would take him on and fund an associated company if he came clean about it or I could have refused to handle the enquiry and have a quiet word with the factoring company.

It is a bit of a moral dilemma as prospective clients discuss their business with me in confidence and expect me to either find them a replacement factor or else to drop it completely but there again I would have a struggle with my conscience if I knew that a company was effectively defrauding a factoring company and I did nothing about it.

I struggled with my conscience for ten minutes then had a quiet word with someone at his factoring company and warned them