Was it just a year ago that Close Invoice Finance opened their Birmingham operational centre in a blaze of publicity. No doubt there will be far less publicity now that they have decided to close it with the inevitable redundancies.
Ian
Cattles Invoice Finance – parent company shares suspended
We were told to expect an announcement this week regarding the proposed sale of Cattles Invoice Finance but much to the surprise of everyone the only announcement to be made so far this week is that the shares in the parent company have been suspended.
According to the report the company is in breach of it’s banking covenants and is currently locked away in talks with it’s bankers in an effort to refinance the company and they are claiming that they are unable to finalise the accounts for the year ended 31st December 2008 until these talks are concluded.
One has to wonder how this announcement tallies with the announcement made just a couple of days ago that CIF were expanding their sales team where the regional managing director made the bold statement that “Despite many of our competitors freezing recruitment as a means to cut costs, we feel it is important to invest in talent because it plays such an integral part of driving growth and business development”
One has to wonder quite what the “talent” has made of today’s announcement
Factoring company of the year silly season is here again
Whilst I’ve been away sunning myself over Easter my inbox has been filling up with emails from various factoring companies telling me about the awards that they had won (or were nominated for)
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
What is the point in using a factoring broker part deux
I was chatting to a friend yesterday about the increasing amount of enquiries that we receive where we are “competing” against another broker (which in many cases can act against the best interests of the prospect) and he told me of a case that he was aware of where the company had approached at least half a dozen brokers earlier this week and each one having ascertained which factoring companies he had already spoken to, put in someone else.
This cannot be in the best interests of the client as the brokers further down the food chain will be desperately punting around for a company that they haven’t already spoken to in order that they can earn from the deal, which could end up with the company tying up a facility with the least appropriate factoring company.
Interestingly enough it only took one guess at the identity of this prospect and Factoring Solutions was one of the brokers that he had approached. Having discussed his requirements we nominated one particular factoring company as probably the best for his needs to be told that he was already in contact with them.
We take our responsibilities as a broker seriously so declined to put forward an alternative. We won’t earn from this particular company but still hope that his rather unusual approach won’t backfire on him.
Another one bites the dust at Close Invoice Finance
We were approached last week by a company who had only been factoring with Close Invoice Finance for two or three weeks but had already run into serious problems and wanted us to find them an alternative factoring company.
The company that we introduced realising the urgency of the situation did their fact finding visit straight away and discovered that there had been breaches of the factoring agreement but sensing that the underlying business was sound they decided to put the deal forward for approval by the credit commitee which was due to meet on Monday 30th March in order to approve the offer of a facility.
Unfortunately Close couldn’t wait one working day and appointed an Administrator on Friday 27th March. It’s quite a sad state of affairs as we thought that the business was salvageable but no doubt by the time the factoring company has charged a load of extra fees and the Administrator has had his whack there won’t be anything left for anyone.
This isn’t the first story that we’ve heard about the ultra hard line being taken by this particular factoring company since the new MD took over and whereas once upon a time they used to have a fine reputation for service they are no longer on our approved list and haven’t been for some time.