Factoring

Challenge Finance enters Administration

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Challenge Finance the small Kent based factoring company has been in trouble for a few years if the rumours are to be believed but it seems that it’s backers have finally lost patience and pulled the plug by appointing Administrators.

Hopefully a white knight will hurridly appear so that the repurcussions for the 90 clients won’t be too severe  as if Bibby another factoring company were to move quickly the disruption would be minimized.

Hopefully Coface won’t lose too much money on this failure as they are still licking their wounds over the Wageroller debacle which cost them a pretty penny

Barclays “bank 80% of the industry’s top 20 recruitment companies”

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“We bank 80% of the industry’s top 20 recruitment companies” is the astounding claim made by Barclays Bank on the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s website.

I only know this as I was contacted by someone yesterday who was setting up a recruitment consultancy and had been in contact with Barclays Sales Finance for a quote.

Forecasting a first year turnover of between £300,00 and £500,000 Barclays wouldn’t have been the most obvious choice which is why I asked him why he had gone to them to be told that they claimed to have a monopoly in the recruitment marketplace.

The quote was rather interesting as whilst the factoring commission was reasonably competitive the devil was in the detail to quote one of my good friends.

Barclays wanted £178 to cover the cost of registering the fixed and floating charge and whilst all factoring companies charge an admin fee to cover setup Barclays wanted the £178 in addition to a stinging 2% of the funding limit.

The funding limit was set at £75,000 so the setup fee of £1,500 would equate to 0.5% of sales if the lower projected limit was reached or 0.3% of turnover if they reached their £500,000 upper sales target.

Oddly enough it wasn’t the expensive quote that brought him our way as it was the concern that the funding limit was so tight on a £500,000 turnover that if his customer hadn’t paid by the 60th day there wouldn’t be any funding available for the following month’s invoices .

We put the prospect in touch with a factoring company who not only offer exceptional service levels but offered an in principle facility with a more competitive factoring commission including significantly lower minimum fees, setup fees of £450 all in and a higher facility limit that is more appropriate for the business and not the factor.

All of the above is by the by as the main reason for this blog entry is the bold claim by Barclays that they “bank 80% of the industry’s top 20 recruitment companies”

The article is here http://www.rec.uk.com/filegrab/?ref=168&f=barclays.pdf

I have no way of checking the accuracy of their claim as I don’t know who the top 20 recruitment companies are but leaving aside their unusual terminology about “banking the companies” I find it very difficult to believe that this could be true.

Anyone who knows different, answers on a postcard please 🙂

 

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Ex factoring man to be next president of the MCC

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Cricket lovers will be aware that the next president of the MCC is John Barclay the ex captain of Sussex but I doubt whether many will know that 25 years ago Barclay used to work for International Factors at a time when they were the pre eminent factoring company in the country. It was later that they started what felt like the annual change of ownership and direction that left them the virtually unknown factoring company that they are today.

Barclay wasn’t alone as a factoring cricketer as at about the same time yours truly used to work alongside the late Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie who was captain of Hampshire in the sixties and also president of the MCC in his time – as well as Nick Pocock who was the current captain of Hampshire at the time.

Who is Katharine Goodwin

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I ask as she has two websites registered to her – invoicefinanceadvice.co.uk and cashflow-advice.co.uk but she hasn’t provided her address details to Nominet as she claims to be non trading. Luckily I have a friend at Nominet and have pointed out to him that this person may claim to be non trading but the websites tell a different story so all will be revealed in a couple of days.

My reason for asking is that this unscrupulous rogue has started a blog on her site but instead of writing her own blog entries like most people do she has just stolen mine word for word. See for yourself at invoicefinanceadvice.co.uk/factoring/blog_files/category-lender-news.html 

I wonder how much trust one can put in a broker who is happy to steal other people’s intellectual property and pass it off as their own.

I have my suspicions but all will be revealed shortly

What is the point in using a factoring broker part deux

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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.