The Asset Based Finance Association (ABFA) is ‘frustrated’ by
lobbyists meeting with government and implying poor practice within
the industry, a spokesman told Leasing Life.
This weekend, the Financial Times (FT)
reported a group called the Campaign for Regulation of Asset-Based
Finance would be meeting with the Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills (BIS) to argue “that bad practices by some
individuals are damaging the industry’s reputation.”
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The group claimed to have received about 100
complaints from customers of asset-based finance providers, such as
those dealing with factoring and invoice-discounting, and said that
it wanted the government to provide regulation.
However the ABFA is already currently updating
its self-regulated Code of Conduct, which is under constant review,
and is also due to meet with the BIS this week.
ABFA head of government affairs Matthew Davies
said that there was no ‘inquiry’ into the industry and pointed out
pointed out that so far only one complaint had been made public,
referring to the FT article which mentions ABFA member Bibby
Financial Services.
“For the industry it is immensely frustrating
to have broad, sweeping allegations made in the media about
supposed ‘poor practice’ within the industry with no evidence to
back them up and for none of our members (if indeed, they do relate
to our members) to have the opportunity to rebut them,” he
said.
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By GlobalData“The fact is this industry is full of people
doing their best to provide funding to businesses of a range of
sizes, and the picture of the industry the campaign group is trying
to portray is not one that we recognise.”
ABFA is a trade body for the majority of the
UK and Ireland’s invoice finance providers, serving an estimated
42,000 businesses and supporting around £238bn of sales last
year.
