Apologies for not updating the blog recently which was in part due to an extended vacation thanks to yet another misfortune emanating from Iceland plus the fact that there doesn’t seem to be anything of interest happening in the factoring world.

The final quarter’s stats for 2009 were recently published by the ABFA and the figures for all of 2009 make quite depressing reading with overall client numbers down by 10% but it’s when one starts to look carefully at individual statistics that it starts to get worrying.

The largest number of clients overall is in the 0 to £500,000 turnover category with 38% of all clients falling within this grouping. The number of clients in this group fell by 11% over the year but the worrying statistic is that overall advances to this group fell by a whopping 56.8% from £908m to £567m

At the end of 2008 the ABFA reported a total of 48,022 companies with either factoring or invoice discounting facilities and whilst this number fell to 43,590 by the end of 2009 the factoring companies that provided the statistics reported that they had lost 20,892 clients throughout the year and gained 15,100

20,892 lost clients is an extremely large percentage of the average number of clients overall and should give cause for concern to observers.

Barclays seem to be the biggest loser as their client numbers went from 4,967 at the end of 2008 to 3,723 at the end of 2009 which is a reduction of 25%