Name: Catalyst Business Finance
Based: Stroud
Website: www.catalyst-finance.com
Catalyst Business Finance provides short-term cashflow solutions for businesses. Managing cash is therefore fundamental to our existence and that of our clients.
We provide cashflow secured primarily on the back of a single invoice, or group of invoices, issued by our clients to their customers. It is an absolute requirement that we have visibility of cash availability, and funds under management have doubled to £7m in the last 12 months to meet growing client demand.
We currently purchase invoices at an annualised rate of £100m, paying cash to our clients (typically up to 80% of gross invoice value) in advance of the invoice due date, with the balance payable on invoice settlement.
In anticipation of how this new industry was set to evolve, the board developed bespoke cash management software. Our system now underpins our decision making, designed not only to do the simple things, like automatically generate client and transactional documentation, but also ensuring that we have visibility of future cash requirements (tracking pipeline deal flow) and, critically, allowing us to release cash to clients only when they have satisfied defined credit criteria (credit management).
In addition, our system tracks overdue payments, produces on-demand client statements of current positions and historical trading activity and tracks introducer payments, reconciling to our Sage accounting system daily.
Our cashflow system has enabled us to grow our business safely and securely, keeping cost of funds to a minimum, to deliver a fast, flexible and efficient service to the benefit our clients.
Jonathan Willder is the chief executive of Catalyst Business Finance.
