Credit Management September 2023

NEWS ROUNDUP
>NEWS
IN BRIEF
Think Tank hears ‘collusion’
risk is on the rise.
FRAUD is on the rise as a small number
of businesses look to take advantage
of ‘circumstances’ and a lack of
enforcement to make off with their
ill-gotten gains.
Ant Persse, CEO of Optimum Finance,
says that collusion is a particular risk:
“Collusion – where the client and the
customer are colluding or are even the
same person and creating an entirely
fictitious relationship – is on the rise,”
he told a CICM Think Tank in August.
“It means having to undertake a
thorough review of a client’s customer
portfolio including personal site visits.”
Fraud resulting from ‘fresh air
invoicing’ – where no goods or services
have been provided – or payments
into a client account as opposed to
the Invoice Finance provider’s Trust
account (a fraud known as ‘Direct
Banking’) are also a problem, although
Open Banking and enhanced debtor
verification to confirm an invoice is
accurate and fair are helping.
Ant says that despite the challenge
of fraud, the popularity of Invoice
Finance as an essential cashflow
“Spiralling
inflation over the
past year made it
harder for people
to stay on top of
their bills, forcing
some to take
out short-term
loans to cover
unexpectedly high
costs.”
funding tool is on the rise and the
future opportunity is significant: “We’re
currently accepting around 90 percent
of funding applications,” Ant says, “and
the businesses we do decline is often
because a potential fraud or irregularity
has been detected.”
He says industry growth could be
higher if there was greater awareness:
“Anecdotally at a recent business
conference, only around 40 percent
of those present knew about Invoice
Finance. We could do more to raise
awareness and help ourselves by
reducing unnecessary complexity and
jargon, with different providers using
different ways of explaining the same
thing.
“Invoice Finance is not complex,
neither is it a dark art, neither is it
particularly expensive with costs being
comparable to other lending products
and with an additional portfolio of
services available. If every firm eligible
for Invoice Finance took advantage of
the facility, something like £150bn in
cash could be unlocked to support the
economic recovery.”
“It means having to undertake a thorough
review of a client’s customer portfolio
including personal site visits.”
Missed payments
THE number of people missing
payments on essential household
bills like energy, phone and water
is as high as it was over the
winter. According to consumer
group Which? around 2.4 million
households missed at least one bill
payment in the month to mid-July.
More than three quarters of a million
(770,000) failed to make mortgage or
rent payments, the group says. In a
monthly online poll of around 2,000
respondents, almost nine percent
of households missed at least one
bill payment in July; in January that
figure was closer to eight percent.
The figure for missed bill payments
had fallen back slightly in May and
June but rose again in July.
Bullivant given lifetime
achievement award
GLEN Bullivant FCICM has been
recognised by the Federation of
European Credit Management
Associations (FECMA) with a lifetime
achievement award.
Receiving the award at FECMA’s fifth
annual conference in Athens in June,
Glen told Credit Management magazine
that his passion for his profession has
not diminished with age or the passage
of time: “The receipt of such prestigious
recognition from FECMA only serves
to reinvigorate my efforts to continue
to promote the profession, CICM and
FECMA,” he said.
“I have long maintained that the UK
leads the way and our friends across the
Channel look to us for ideas, inspiration
and support. The truth is more likely to
be a recognition on their part that I am
still breathing in and out. Nevertheless,
it is an honour and I will fly the flag
in Dusseldorf in October, Budapest in
November and Malta next April.”
The lifetime achievement award
is given to members who have made
a remarkable contribution to the
development and implementation of
Credit Management in Europe. The first
one was awarded to Oswald
Royaards in Budapest in
2013. Other recipients have
included Jim Logue in
Brussels (2015), and Bernd
Weiss in Malta (2018).
Brave | Curious | Resilient / www.cicm.com / September 2023 / PAGE 9