Over the years, the finance options available to businesses have increased, with providers now offering a wide range of finance products and services. Alternative financing options such as Invoice Finance have become very popular for UK B2B businesses, or more specifically, SMEs.
Invoice Finance, in particular, has become one of the most popular forms of alternative finance for SMEs, allowing quick and flexible access to outstanding invoices. According to recent data, the number of businesses using Invoice Finance has grown by 10% in the past three years, with businesses now looking for more diverse forms of finance to support their cashflow needs.The data, provided by UK Finance in their latest Business Finance Review, also showed that alternative forms of finance such as Invoice Factoring and Invoice Discounting are being used by nearly 40,000 businesses. Of these businesses, 36% are users of Factoring and another 36% Invoice Discounting. The majority of these businesses were made up of those in the manufacturing, distribution and services sectors. The overall advances of Invoice Finance and asset-based lending has consistently risen over the past few years, now standing at £21.2 billion at the end of Q3 2019, of which £9.1 billion was advanced to approximately 38,000 SMEs.
In addition to this, the latest data provided by the independent SME Finance Monitor shows that the number or SMEs using external finance rose to 46% in Q2 2019, up from 36% in the same period of 2018 which is a promising figure for the industry and the highest level seen to date on the monitor.
However, despite this increase in Invoice Finance users, recent data by British Business Bank showed that a third of business owners are not aware of the alternative financing options that are available to them.
Skipton Business Finance offers a range of Invoice Finance products which can provide businesses with quick and flexible cashflow solutions.You can find out more information here about the Invoice Finance products available at Skipton Business Finance.