The word on the grapevine is that the banks are becoming increasingly nervous about many of their invoice discounting facilities in these recessionary times and their nerves are showing in the amount of Independent Bank Reviews that are being performed where an outside firm of accountants / insolvency practitioners are asked to perform reviews of the company in order to calm the nerves of the invoice discounting financier.
These reviews do not come cheap and naturally it is the client who is forced to bear the cost. It wouldn’t be so bad if the discounter acted upon the review but we have recently come across a case where the bank factor appointed a well known form of insolvency practitioners to conduct a review to support an application for an increased funding line. The review was very positive and supportive of the client but the bank decided not to increase the funding line in any event but still charged the £15,000 cost of the review to the poor client.
Interestingly enough the above post was meant to be about the increased nervousness that the bank owned factoring companies were feeling at the moment and how it was costing their clients sizeable amounts as they were having to pay for the “IBR”
I heard an amusing story today where a bank owned factor appointed a well known firm to conduct an extensive review and they completely failed to pick up the fact that the top three debtors all had common directors and shareholders with the client – whoops