Auctioning your Invoices: Flexible Alternatives to Factoring
Peter Penny , CEO, Connected Pictures
- Having seen the negative side of traditional factoring services, Peter's company decided to seek an alternative way to unlock cash from its invoices. Here Peter discusses the advantages of these new platforms and how Connected Pictures has adapted to maximise its working capital.

New sources of finance

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New sources of finance

The retail bond process: an innovative way of raising finance
David Walker , Partner, Memery Crystal
- David talks us through the legal process of offering a retail bond, covering the necessary advisors and interest payments, and underlines why it may become an increasingly attractive funding proposition

Auctioning your Invoices: Flexible Alternatives to Factoring
Peter Penny , CEO, Connected Pictures
- Having seen the negative side of traditional factoring services, Peter's company decided to seek an alternative way to unlock cash from its invoices. Here Peter discusses the advantages of these new platforms and how Connected Pictures has adapted to maximise its working capital.

Creating a diversified lending landscape
Sam Gyimah , MP, East Surrey
- Sam Gyimah talks to us about why a greater range of lending options beyond the top five banks, including bond markets, online services and fund managers, is necessary to help small businesses

Working with SMEs to create corporate innovation
Nick Pendleton , Director of group strategy and innovation, Royal Mail
- Nick Pendleton explains the importance of working around corporate processes to create sustainable growth for the future. Entrepreneurs and SMEs give the impetus needed for corporate innovation.

Invoice Financing: A New Way of Fundraising for SMEs
Anil Stocker , Co-Founder, Market Invoice
- Anil Stocker's innovative young firm seeks to make fundraising easier for SMEs. Here he explains how Market Invoice goes about helping small firms to unlock the fundraising potential of their unpaid invoices.

AIM High? Raising Funds Through Retail Bonds
Ed Orr , Chairman, Mr and Mrs Smith
- In his role as Co-founder and Chairman of the boutique travel recommendations website Mr and Mrs Smith, Ed Orr has helped introduce some innovative fundraising methods. Here he explains the firm's retail bonds.

Invoice financing: broadening your “basket of financing options”
Kate Sharp , CEO, ABFA
- Kate Sharp, ABFA’s CEO, tells us about asset-based financing, a generous and flexible means of funding, and why more businesses should look into this “underrated and misunderstood form of finance”

How to raise £1.5m in a few weeks - Crowdfunding
Jonathan Downey , Director, Rushmore Group - Last year, the Rushmore Group of members’ clubs raised £1.5m through Crowdcube: their director Jonathan tells us why crowdfunding could be the way forward for other businesses seeking to raise equity finance

Retail bonds: Tapping into £1 trillion of unused cash
Rupert Lee-Browne , CEO, Caxton FX
- Retail bonds are currently poorly publicised, but Rupert explains that as an alternative to bank lending and selling equity, they may be the best means of raising money for SMEs

Shared Funding: Making both investing and fundraising easier
Samir Desai , Co-founder and Director, Funding Circle
- Funding Circle is an online platform that connects businesses with investors. With £31mn lent so far, the business is growing quickly. Here one of the firm’s founders explains why it is so popular.

Open Innovation - Solving problems through competitions
Simon Schneider , General Manager of Grand Challenges, InnoCentive
- Simon Schneider at InnoCentive explains how open innovation and competitions can be used as a complement to R&D and a way to finance innovation.

The Editor - The Editor, Editor, Knowledge Peers

04 Mar 2013

0 Comments

Key points

While embarking on increasingly large projects, Peter needed a way to unlock the capital tied up in growing invoices. However he feared the forceful approach of traditional factoring services could damage the relationships he had built with clients.
Online invoice finance platform, Market Invoice provided a more nuanced alternative. It could adapt to the flexible nature of Connected Picture’s project timelines and allowed the company to break down large projects into smaller chunks.
Securing finance on MarketInvoice was very simple. Standard financial information and forecasts were needed to set Connected Pictures up on the platform and a signed job-completion form served to guarantee each invoice was genuine.
It is not appropriate to auction all invoices. However the fact that smaller invoices can be bundled together does make it a practical option more often than not..
While invoice funding has been tremendously helpful, Peter is keen to stress that it is not a silver bullet and should be used in conjunction with traditional sources of finance including the bank.

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