A concentration limit indicates how much debt an invoice finance funder will allow with a single debtor. By way of an example if your concentration limit is 30% and your total ledger is £100,000 then the lender will only consider £30,000 of funding with any single debtor. Supposing you had £50,000 of debt with your largest debtor then only £30,000 would be considered as eligible debt. This would reduce the total eligible debt to £80,000 so if your prepayment was 85% the funding generated would be £68,000.
It is important to understand the impact of a concentration limit on your funding. In the example above although you as a business have an 85% prepayment level the impact of the concentration limit has reduced the actual prepayment level to just 68%.
Concentration limits will not be an issue for many businesses who have a good spread of customers. However, if you feel that one customer could account for 20% of the money owed to you at any one time it is important to consider the concentration limit. Some lenders impose a rigid 20% concentration limit while others will offer a concentration limit as high as 100% meaning they will finance a single debtor. Be honest with yourself and try to envisage what may happen in the future.