The Invoice Finance Deal He Was Never Shown

A client recently asked me whether the invoice finance deal he had been offered was any good.

I looked at it and immediately saw the problem.

It was a bog-standard facility. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but when you go directly to one finance company, you only see what that particular lender chooses to offer.

You don’t know what else might be available because you don’t know which questions to ask.

The option he didn’t know existed

Take credit control.

My client assumed he had two choices: continue doing everything himself or hand it over and have a finance company’s name appear on letters to his customers.

But there is another option.

Some finance companies can manage credit control day to day while operating entirely under your business name. To your customers, it simply looks like an efficient in-house credit control department.

He had never been shown that option.

The contract mattered even more

The facility he had been offered included a full personal guarantee, much like a conventional business loan.

Some lenders will cap that guarantee, but often only if you know to ask and how to negotiate it.

What we arranged went further still: a fraud-only warranty.

That meant it would only bite in the event of actual fraud, rather than simply because the business failed. That isn’t a slightly improved personal guarantee. It represents a completely different level of personal risk.

We also placed him with an entirely different lender, selected from more than 70 options because its facility properly suited his business and circumstances.

That is the value of using a specialist.

It isn’t simply about securing better terms. It is about being matched with the right lender and facility in the first place.

If you have been offered a finance deal and found yourself wondering, “Is this actually any good?”, it is worth getting a second pair of eyes on it before you sign.

It costs nothing to ask.

If you need someone on your side, I’m Mark Smillie. Why not call me today?