Ian

Factoring for recruitment companies

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We seem to be receiving an unusually high number of enquiries from recruitment companies who have been using the services of one particular high profile payroll and back office company complaining that they aren’t getting the expected levels of funding due to problems with credit limits.

This is understandable in a non recourse situation if the customers aren’t creditworthy but in the case of the latest one his customers are local authorities with the largest customer representing less than 20% of the total ledger.

Call me cynical but this is a classic symptom of a payroll company running out of money and squeezing it’s clients as a result and is one reason why I never recommend taking debtor funding from anyone other than a specialist factoring company.

One of the potential problems in dealing with many of these quasi factoring companies is that they obtain their own funding by “re-factoring” their clients’ invoices with their own factoring company and problems can and do happen when the factoring company restricts the funding due to matters that are nothing to do with their client but are possibly down to problems caused by another of their clients.

Anyone contemplating a payroll funding facility with one of these companies should do a company search with someone like Duedil and check to see if they have a debenture secured on their assets granted to a factoring company.

There are many factoring companies who offer factoring for recruitment companies including payroll and back office but again a word of caution is advised as many outsource the payroll function to a third party, normally without the knowledge of the client and whilst we have relationships with many factors we tend to only introduce our clients to one of the two or three factoring companies that actually handle the payroll themselves in house.

Any recruitment company looking for factoring with or without payroll should contact Factoring Solutions who are one of the longest established specialist brokers in the UK and only deal with those factoring companies that actually perform

 

Factoring brokers and the internet

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More and more supposed factoring brokers are using the internet to attract customers. Unfortunately this means that anyone with some web design skills can throw together a site and try and generate some factoring leads but it can’t be in the customers best interests if the person behind the website doesn’t know the first thing about factoring.

Anyone who keeps an eye on Google will have noticed a new website has recently appeared on page one with what on the surface appears to be a decent website containing a few fairly standard articles about factoring.

The website contains logos from Venture, Bibby, Lloyds TSB, Aldermore, Close and Hitachi which purports to give the impression that the company has a relationship with each of them, but does it?

There is an invitation to submit details on a contact form but nowhere on the site does it have an address or telephone number and having looked up ownership of the domain in Nominet I have never heard of the owner and neither has anyone that I have asked although a quick Google check shows that as well as articles about factoring he has also published articles about getting rid of spots and how to cook a pizza.

Most internet savvy people would never deal with a website that doesn’t have either an address or telephone number but unfortunately many of the potential customers won’t be as wary.

This isn’t the only one as I came up with another last week that have a highly professional and expensive looking website with branches in Glasgow, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham which makes it look like a pretty sizeable outfit.

It even has testimonials including one saying “We found ****** to be absolutely terrific. They arranged an invoice factoring deal for us quickly and efficiently. Would certainly recommend them” and this was signed by DL, Operations Manager of ABC Ltd

Intrigued to find out more about this high profile outfit I looked up the ownership of the website to see that it registered to the very same ABC Ltd who gave it such a glowing testimonial and a bit more research shows the website owner is a actually a contract cleaning company.

I have often said that factoring companies should be regulated and I also think that it would be in the customers’ best interests if brokers were also regulated as I’m sure that you can’t get best advice from a broker unless he knows the industry, but unfortunately the poor old customer has no idea if his broker knows what he’s talking about or not and it seems that there are a lot around who don’t.

Business Money gone bust ???

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Business Money Ltd changed it’s name to Montirone Ltd on 13th January and promptly convened a Meeting of Creditors to be held in London on 3rd February.

Looking at the website it seems that the magazine is now being published by Business-Money.com Ltd which I presume is owned by the same people

NACFB drop the ball

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According to a recent press release the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) have dropped the ball by appointing Andrew Bullard of Cashflow UK to their board.

According to the blurb “In his new position on the board, Andrew will now be representing commercial finance brokers and promoting invoice finance as a viable source of income for members of the association”

It further goes on to say “Andrew says: “Companies in the UK continue to face the challenge of securing finance through traditional routes and I look forward to championing the benefits of invoice finance to commercial brokers within the association.”

Cashflow UK is then described as “a leading finance brokerage specialising in factoring and invoice discounting and its team of financial experts is able to offer impartial advice and find your client the best provider to match their individual business needs.”

What of course the NACFB have omitted to say is that Cashflow UK is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bibby Factors which makes Andrew’s role as an independent advisor somewhat moot.

Most of the truly independent factoring brokers have always had a sense of unease that one of the major players in the broking market is actually owned by a factoring company but surely this latest step is taking things a bit too far