I write from, time to time, about financing, strategy, impact startup and entreprenurial experiences, financial inclusion and sustainability. While I have professionally been financing impactful projects, my personal focus in sustainability started with financial inclusion, moving onto care and most recently, greentech.
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When You Should Order Invoice Finance on the Funding Menu–Part 1
Money comes at a price. The more willing your lender is to take risks, the higher the return expected. That translates to your borrowing costs and what you have to bring to the table. Practically speaking, if your business does not have the trading history or serious collateral needed by a lender, invoices and orders…
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Why e-Invoicing Helps Late Payment to Smaller Suppliers More Than Regulation
This week, the European Directive 2011/7/EU on Combating Late Payment in Commercial Transactions comes into force. To summarise, it’s looking to cap payment terms at 60 days unless agreed otherwise, ‘provided such extension is not grossly unfair’ to the supplier. It also sets a maximum period of acceptance/verification to 30 days unless agreed otherwise and…
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Connecting To Cash: Keys To Unlock Working Capital
Life as an entrepreneur trying to reshape commercial lending is far from boring. Trying to understand what will make commercial lenders finance a business. Figuring out why a business waits until they have a critical cash need before acting. Or for that matter, what about their previous lending experience discouraged the businesses from talking to…
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Turning e-Invoicing Into A Key To Liquidity
Policy makers recognise that any means to inject liquidity into the Small and Mid-Size Business (SMB) sector needs to be pursued. The BIS task force in the UK identified Supply Chain Finance (SCF) or Reverse Factoring as one of the ways to increase cash flow availability to SMB supplier base. Unfortunately, credit capacity is a…
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Revenues Fund Working Capital, Not Equity!
Short term needs are better financed by short term capital. Equity is better spent on building a business, not bridging cash flow. Craig, the founder of a Bay Area mobile media start-up neatly summarises something we observe across many early stage tech businesses. ‘”We approached x bank (a well known bank in the community) to…
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It’s All In The Story
I received some emails from a few customers this week asking if we could connect them to cash. One company had a large customer willing to pay it a guaranteed minimum per month (after invoice) over a 4 year period, and the company wanted to explore ways to get more of this cash up front…
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Initial Reaction: The BIS Task Force Report
For those who have not already read it, the report released by the BIS Task Force will make interesting reading. Some of the figures quoted in there are scary: 9% of SMBs sought financing in 2011; 1/3 of SMBs applying were unsuccessful in their loan application; a projected 5 year funding gap of £44 billion…
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Is Lending To SMBs That Much Harder?
So the finger pointing continues. Policy makers are still unhappy with bank lending to SMBs. Lobby groups are not dancing in the aisles about this either and everyone has some ideas on how to tap additional sources. Lending to businesses, SMBs in particular has been decreasing, despite the need for it to grow instead. I’ve…