Receivables finance boosts the recovery
All 40 respondents to Business Money’s seventeenth annual review, Receivables 2013 reported an increase in support to UK business in 2013.
Barclays led the sales financed league with £70.3bn of sales whilst RBS Invoice Finance was top lender with £8.8bn advanced. In the more exotic spheres, BLME made a strong showing, leading the way in Sharia financed options while ABN AMRO, Leumi ABL and BNP Paribas exploited cross-border connections well.
Bibby is the UK’s biggest independent by some way with 3,877 UK clients whilst challenger bank Aldermore saw its invoice finance division up its support by 16% and Metro Bank’s acquisition of SME Invoice Finance adds fresh power and ambition to an already well established finance house.
The smaller independents saw Hitachi double its book in the last two years whilst all of the others reported growth, most of them in double figure percentages.
Business Money editor, Robert Lefroy, commented: “The invoice finance sector supported sales of £275bn in 2013, a figure exceeding 15% of UK GDP. Business Money analyses the performance of the leading 40 providers of this unsung, mainstream medium of business finance each year. They all return customer satisfaction levels of 90%+ and have fuelled the recovery with their ready support of swelling order books.”
