CM December 2021

INTERVIEW
GOING
FOR GOLD
Sean Feast FCICM speaks to
Anthony Persse about invoice finance,
SMEs, and the importance of welsh gold.
ANTHONY Persse is a man
on a mission. He’s looking
to overturn more than three
decades of negative thinking
around Invoice Finance and
shift the conversation onto
a more positive footing: “Cashflow is about
managing working capital and getting money
through the door,” he says, “and Invoice Finance
does exactly that. It is a cash accelerator,
unlocking money trapped in client invoices.
“Credit managers understand the importance
of cash, and Invoice Finance can effectively
inject cash into a business without that business
creating additional indebtedness, unlike a loan.
Why would that be seen as anything other than
a good thing?”
As the Chief Executive of Optimum Finance,
it is not surprising that Anthony has a passion
for the industry, but he is not blind to its
challenges. Historically, he says, the industry
has not made it easy for itself: “It’s seen as too
complex,” he explains, “and it doesn’t help that
different businesses use their own jargon to
explain the same things. It is also seen as high
effort and administratively burdensome, so it
is not surprising it doesn’t achieve the level of
traction that it should.
“If we are to make Invoice Finance more
mainstream, then we have to demystify it, make
is easier to access, strip out the unnecessary
jargon and highlight the many tangible benefits
it can offer businesses. There is no excuse for it
being seen as lending of the last resort; it should
be seen as an essential tool in speeding up the
cashflow cycle.”
MILK ROUND
Anthony’s enthusiasm for Invoice Finance has
its foundation in a career in credit that started
more than a quarter of a century ago. Born in
Newport, the son of an electrician (Henry) and
a housewife (Ann), Anthony started work at the
age of 10, helping with a milk round: “I have
always had a strong work ethic, and appreciation
for cash. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve known how
hard small business owners work for their cash
and want to make sure they can benefit from
their efforts,” he explains.
An early bid for stardom saw Anthony appear
in an advertisement for a goldmine near
Dolgellau. “I was picked with three others,”
he recalls, “and I can still remember all their
names!” (Princess Diana’s wedding ring was
made from Gold from this mine.)
Despite a leaning towards media studies, a
careers’ assessment at school in Lliswerry led
to the unlikely proposal that Anthony should
become a diplomat, but instead he decided
upon an apprenticeship: “There were two that
I applied for,” he continues. “One was as an
apprentice electrician, to follow in my father’s
footsteps, and the other was an apprenticeship
in accountancy. I chose the second and
began studying for my Chartered Institute of
Management Accounting (CIMA) qualification
at what was then British Steel.”
Moving up through the ranks at British Steel
(which in turn became Corus and then more
recently Tata) – and studying for a degree
in Business and Finance while he was at it
– Anthony became a credit risk analyst in a
business that he describes as very ‘traditional’.
Most of the processes were manual, and
Anthony recalls receiving financial statements
on disks from Bureau van Dyke: “It was very
industrial,” he laughs.
At NCM (now Atradius), he found the
complete opposite: “At British Steel we worked
closely with NCM, the credit insurer, and when
the opportunity arose, I joined them as an
underwriter. The credit insurance sector was all
about systems and technology, with access to
data at your fingertips, so it was very different
from the world I had left behind.”
MIXED PORTFOLIOS
Initially working across Atradius’s food,
agriculture, textiles and fashion portfolios,
Anthony also spent time in the company’s
collections business, a role he enjoyed, before
returning to underwriting and being given
responsibility for the company’s retail and
services clients. This was just at the point
in 2008 when the world went into economic
meltdown and the credit insurance sector was
blamed with adding fuel to what seemed, at the
time, to be an unstoppable fire: “It was certainly
Brave | Curious | Resilient / www.cicm.com / December 2021 / PAGE 20