Touch Financial are invoice finance brokers and are part of the SFP Group. Touch Financial claim to be the largest invoice finance broker in the UK and their website claims they help 600 businesses and raise over £3.5m in funding each month.
They form part of the SFP group and Touch Financial is the trading name of SFP Brokers Ltd.
SFP is actually a firm of insolvency practitioners that was started in 2002 and is based in Canary Wharf, London. They have become firmly established as a provider of insolvency services to the invoice finance market and the larger ABL market.
It would be fair to say that their entrance to the invoice finance broking world was a bit of a suprise to brokers and lenders alike. They took over the operation of X-bridge which was a specialist in driving online inquiries via their portals for insurance and commercial finance mostly via their ‘simply business’ website.
Touch Financial have put more infrastructure in place to ensure higher conversion rates of invoice finance inquiries and they have harnessed affiliates such as Companeo to provide additional leads.
While Touch Financial take commissions for the leads they pass to lenders many feel that the main focus is to use the leads to attract more insolvency work from the invoice finance market where clients are failing or have failed.
It is a clever model and SFP have worked hard both on the insolvency side and in structuring a brokerage to deal with the high volume of inquiries and on that basis I wish them luck.
If I have any concerns they surround the treatment of clients of Touch Financial and in some instances the clients of invoice finance lenders. Are clients placed with lenders because that lender is best placed to meet their needs or because the SFP group owe that lender a deal? Will lenders create insolvency opportunities to pass to SFP in return for additional new clients or introductions?
These are merely questions that the structure of SFP and Touch Financial raise. For the good of the industry and the good of SME’s I hope that clients are treated properly in all instances.
