Global Factoring and Receivables Finance Industry increased by 6%
In 2018 the world factoring industry volume continued its upward trend with a total reported figure of over €2,767bn representing over 6% growth compared to the previous year.
When looking at the individual markets, we must remember that the local currency fluctuation against the euro played an extremely important role.
Europe is still the largest market accounting for 66% of the total and showed a growth of 7% reaching a volume of over 1,828bn.
France with a figure of 320.4bn (+10%) has taken the lead, overtaking UK’s 320.2 (-1%), Italy follows with 247.4 (+8%) and, close behind, is Germany (estimated 244.3 +5%). Next is Spain with 166.4 (+14%)
Only a few minus signs, most important being Turkey with a 22% drop to €27bn, however, in local currency the reported figure is +1% while Switzerland’s figure is highly influenced by the withdrawal of a major player from the market.
Next largest continent is Asia Pacific still with an upward trend of 6% to reach close to €696bn. Way behind China’s over 411bn (+1%), Japan growing 32% recovers from last year’s fall bouncing back to over 49bn, very close to the 2017 result. Hong Kong exceeded 53bn (+14%) Singapore remained stable at 44bn and the only reported drop was in Taiwan which is now close to 41bn. Official figures are finally available for Korea (over 25bn) and Malaysia (in excess of 4bn).
South America with a 4% growth is next, with a volume reported of over 121bn followed by Argentina (3 bn, +34% ), Mexico (25bn, +5%) Chile (26bn, +16%) and Peru (12bn. +19%), all playing an important role. Together with the “smaller” contributors they helped in reducing the effect of the Brazilian 6% drop.
North America follows with a negative trend highly affected by Canada’s significant decline to just over 2bn, mainly due the changes in the internal structure of one of the major players. In the US the figure relating to the small group of the larger players always reported in our survey remains very close to last year’s figure generating almost 88bn.
Africa slowly (+2%) continues its growth to exceed 22bn: South Africa leads the way with a +9% (short of 19bn) with Egypt (+24%) and Mauritius (+9%) compensating Morocco’s 25% drop.
The Middle East also grew by 10%, to reach a figure close to 9bn in spite of the Israeli drop (-19%), mainly thanks to United Arab Emirates 38% growth.
The details of the figures will be available early June in the FCI Annual Review that will be released at the Annual Meeting in Vietnam (9-14 June). You will find a copy of the publication on FCI website on 12 June.
About FCI
FCI was set up in 1968 as a non-profit global association for factoring and receivables finance companies around the world. Today, FCI has grown into the world’s representative factoring network and association with close to 400 members in 90 countries and member transactions representing nearly 90% of the world’s international correspondent factoring volume. Today, FCI is truly the global representative body for the Factoring & Receivables Finance Industry.
FCI offers three major areas of activities:
CONNECT: the Business network supports cross-border factoring activities through which its members cooperate as export and import factors
EDUCATE: FCI promotes and develops best practices in both domestic and international factoring and related Open Account Finance products
INFLUENCE: FCI promotes and defends the Industry with stakeholders and policy makers worldwide
