INTERVIEW GOING FOR GOLD Sean Feast FCI<strong>CM</strong> 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 N<strong>CM</strong> (now Atradius), he found the complete opposite: “At British Steel we worked closely with N<strong>CM</strong>, 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 / <strong>December</strong> <strong>2021</strong> / PAGE 20
INTERVIEW AUTHOR – Sean Feast FCI<strong>CM</strong> “Cashflow is about managing working capital and getting money through the door, and Invoice Finance does exactly that. It is a cash accelerator, unlocking money trapped in client invoices.’’ Brave | Curious | Resilient / www.cicm.com / <strong>December</strong> <strong>2021</strong> / PAGE 21 continues on page 22 >
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