Factoring companies

Venture Finance have been reading my website

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The Factoring Solutions website has been pretty much unchanged for ten years and one of the comments that I made all those years ago in lighthearted manner was :-

“Despite the importance of selecting the right factoring company it seems that many companies using invoice finance to speed up cash flow still find their factor by looking in Yellow Pages – which is surely why there are so many factoring companies beginning with the letter A”

It seems that Venture Finance have now realised the error of their ways and are now changing their name to ABN AMRO Commercial Finance thus jumping from the back of the queue straight to the front of the chasing pack.

I must admit that I was surprised to hear of the change of name as not only is Venture Finance one of the better known factoring companies as it is but AMN AMRO is probably best known to the average man as the bank that brought RBS to it’s knees thus bearing a large responsibility for the problems within the UK banking industry and therefore the economy today.

Not only that but ABN AMRO Commercial Finance hardly trips easily off the tongue 🙂

Factoring and invoice discounting review of 2011

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I guess that it’s been pretty much the sort of year that we all expected, with the factoring industry as a whole pedalling hard just to stand still.

According to the ABFA statistics the total number of companies using factoring and invoice discounting at the end of September was 41,572 which was a net increase of 61 since 1st January.

Interestingly the factoring industry took on 8,000 new clients in the period but lost a similar amount. It’s normal that quite a few of the new factoring clients are phoenix’s of existing clients but my understanding is that less and less companies have risen from the ashes this year.

Stats for the final quarter of the year won’t be out for a few months yet but chatting to other brokers as well as factoring companies it seems that the final quarter has been even more of a struggle with enquiries down and companies taking longer and longer to decide what they want to do anyway.

Over at Factoring Solutions we aren’t bucking the trend with our enquiry levels down on last year but oddly enough we have had quite a good year as the quality of enquiry has been higher and we are getting a higher proportion of deals away even if the lead time is getting longer and longer. In November two different factoring companies both paid away decent deals that first arrived on the scene 18 months ago before prevaricating like mad for a year and a half and finally signing on the dotted line when we had all but given up on them.

I am frequently asked why I haven’t blogged as much this year and the honest answer is that there has been very little to blog about. No factoring companies have gone bust, no new ones have started up and there isn’t much tittle tattle to write about. I notice that a few of my broking competitors have now started to blog but with the best will in the world their efforts seem to be designed to try and boost Google rankings rather than to be read by human beings as the articles seem to be the same “what is factoring” article rehashed every month whereas this blog is actually designed to be read by factoring people and I won’t post just for the sake of it.

There are one of two stories that I have deliberately not run with as most industry insiders already know about them whilst I can’t see it being in the public interest to bring them to a wider audience and to those readers who email me complaining that I haven’t published their responses I would remind you that this is a personal blog and not a forum.

There is just the one rumour lingering that has been around for the best part of the year concerning the supposed take-over of one particular factoring company and I have been told in the strictest of confidence from several sources that the buyer is – a different company each time 🙂

Business Money Dinner

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The annual Business Money Dinner is always a good time to meet up with old friends and make new ones and last night’s do in Birmingham was no exception. The food and comedian were dreadful but they were amply made up for by the eye candy from Warwick University in the next room.

One of the things that I always find interesting is which factoring broker is sitting at which factoring company’s table as it gives a good idea of who is in favour with who and last night there were one or two surprises. Equally surprising was some of the absences as many of the high profile broking outfits were noticeable by their absence.

Many thanks to mine hosts for an excellent and amusing evening

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.

Bibby is not being taken over by Ultimate Finance

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Shares in Ultimate Finance were suspended this morning subsequent to an announcement that talks were well down the road leading to a reverse take-over of another factoring company.

Needless to say the wires have been hot with speculation today and so far it has been confirmed that 15 different factoring companies were the target according to 15 different people with Bibby being the only one so far that hasn’t been mentioned.

I will admit now that I honestly haven’t a clue who the target is and although I can rule out many of those being speculated about on the basis of size, culture or geography I can’t come up with a sure fire alternative.