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How invoice financing could help London businesses

Setting up and running a business in London offers a lot of fantastic opportunities across many industries, from finance and technology to catering and more. With these opportunities and the chance to grow comes plenty of obstacles and challenges though. As one of the most expensive cities in the world, the costs can set many back. Invoice finance can offer a solution to many London businesses in various ways.

Cover the rent

One of the largest expenses for any London business will be renting office space. The housing market gets a lot of attention due to its ever-increasing prices in the UK’s capital city with less paid to commercial buildings. In London the average cost per person to rent office space ranges greatly between £650 to £1400 per person. This is more than double and at times triple that of that in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Invoice financing can help provide the finance at the start of the month to cover rent before clients pay their invoices.

Get ahead of the competition

Most other businesses know the value of setting up at least a base in London, meaning whichever sector yours works in there will likely be plenty of competition nearby. Invoice financing offers the opportunity to grow your business by providing finances up front that you are owed by clients. Rather than hold off from any ambitious projects until they have settled, you can use these funds to grow and take advantage of opportunities your competition in London may otherwise miss out on.

Stay on top of bills

The main thing that kills 25 per cent of businesses is poor cash flow. In London especially, this can occur due to costly bills and overheads going out before client payments have landed. With invoice financing your cash flow process can be smoothed over by having easy and quick access to the cash required when it’s needed. This can ensure you stay on top of bills and don’t become one of the 25 per cent.

Starting up

London provides a great environment for starting a business, with it a go to place for technology and financial start-ups. Along with ensuring you have enough initial capital to get started, you will need enough to cover the costs and develop growth. Invoice financing can help work towards this if your capital starts to run out and the business has to wait a few weeks or months before clients are due to pay (with little room to negotiate being a small company).

Starting or running a business sin London can be highly successful and invoice finance could be a solution worth investigating to create a strong financial process.

Source: London Loves Business

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Invoice financing reaches record high in UK

Figures from finance and banking trade association UK Finance have shown invoice financing has reached a record high of more than £22 billion.

The figures showed an increase in invoice finance to businesses in the third quarter of 2017, with a year-on-year rise of 13 per cent.

Growth

A number of invoice financing firms have driven growth in the invoice finance and asset-based lending sector. Global electronic invoicing firm Tungsten Network Finance announced its total originated invoice outstandings have reached a record £54.5 million. This is up from 89 per cent of £28.8 million in October last year.

Despite the positive figures, there are concerns about how negotiations over Brexit will affect invoice finance levels, with research from tech services company Equiniti showing a connection between the confidence of businesses when borrowing and economic fluctuations in the UK. Figures from the analysis showed declines in GDP growth have had a knock-on effect on the confidence of businesses when it comes to invoice borrowing.

Encouraging

Commenting on UK Finance’s figures, UK Finance Director of Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Matthew Davies said there is increasing understanding among businesses of all sizes of how invoice finance and asset-based lending are able to support them as they grow. It’s encouraging that a significant proportion of the sustained increases in lending recently is helping to boost exports.

However, he added  more funding could and should be provided through invoice finance, and called for the UK Government to bring forward long-awaited legislation to provide smaller businesses in particular with access to much-needed capital.

Source: LSBF