factoring blog for news and views from the world of factoring
Factoring and invoice discounting news, views, warnings and gossip written for real people and not search engine bots
Bibby Factors have quietly announced that Simon Featherstone will be taking over as Chief Executive of the Bibby Factoring Group on the retirement of David Robertson. This is quite a coup as Simon is currently running the hugely successful factoring arm of Lloyds TSB.
I doubt whether Ed Rimmer will be best pleased though
According to a recent press release the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) have dropped the ball by appointing Andrew Bullard of Cashflow UK to their board.
According to the blurb “In his new position on the board, Andrew will now be representing commercial finance brokers and promoting invoice finance as a viable source of income for members of the association”
It further goes on to say “Andrew says: “Companies in the UK continue to face the challenge of securing finance through traditional routes and I look forward to championing the benefits of invoice finance to commercial brokers within the association.”
Cashflow UK is then described as “a leading finance brokerage specialising in factoring and invoice discounting and its team of financial experts is able to offer impartial advice and find your client the best provider to match their individual business needs.”
What of course the NACFB have omitted to say is that Cashflow UK is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bibby Factors which makes Andrew’s role as an independent advisor somewhat moot.
Most of the truly independent factoring brokers have always had a sense of unease that one of the major players in the broking market is actually owned by a factoring company but surely this latest step is taking things a bit too far
Almost all of them.
We were approached by a company last week that was looking for a factoring facility and having read our website they were interested in our recommendations. The MD mentioned that he had already approached Cattles Invoice Finance on the basis that they were award winners to which my response was that almost all factoring companies were award winners somewhere or another.
Looking at the factoring and invoice discounting companies’ website I noticed that Cattles were proudly proclaiming to have won the Business Innovation of the Year award at the National Business Awards’ North West regional finals.
Moving onto Close Invoice Finance and they are claiming the Business Moneyfacts Best Factoring and Invoice Discounting Provider award for the third year running whilst Venture Finance are the winners of the Credit Today Factor Discounter of the Year for the second year running.
Perhaps the most amusing website is that of Bibby Factors where they are proud of the fact that they were voted best factor and discounter by NACFB 2003 2004 2005 2006 thus prompting the question “What happened in 2007 then”
In addition to the above I went to the annual Dealmakers Dinner late last year which included an awards ceremony and GE Commercial Finance managed to win the Dealmakers Asset Based Lending award of the year.
I have no doubt that the clearing bank factors have also won a shelf full of awards between them as I seem to recall that Lloyds TSB was the victor at the Dealmakers Dinner in the previous year.
Oddly enough we introduced the prospective client that started me thinking about awards to one of the few factoring companies that doesn’t seem to have won an award at all even though they consistantly offer an above average service at competitive rates.