Please find answers to frequently asked questions below

Yes, Close Invoice Finance is part of Close Brothers Group, a diversified group of specialist financial services businesses that has been at the forefront of banking expertise for over 100 years and ranks among the top 250 listed companies in the UK.
 

Find out more about us

Our head office is in Brighton and we have a growing network of branches throughout the UK & Ireland, giving you easy access to local teams who can make quick decisions. We also operate in Germany.

View our map to find your nearest branch.

Invoice finance (Factoring or Invoice Discounting) is a smart way to fund your business. You effectively sell us your unpaid invoices. We pay you up to 95% of their value the same day you raise them, so you have instant access to the money your customers owe you. When the debt is finally collected, we pay you the balance less an agreed fee.

Factoring works in a similar way with the added support of a credit control team who collect the payments on your behalf.

View our 'How invoice finance works' infographic

We fund all kinds of businesses, typically with a turnover in excess of £1m, although we do often help smaller organisations too. For invoice finance to work, you should be in a business-to-business sector. Your company must raise invoices (not deal in cash) and have a strong proof of debt, such as despatch notes for goods delivered or timesheets that back up service delivery.
 

See how our products compare

Yes, when you look closely at costs, invoice finance can compare very favourably with overdrafts. Loans and overdrafts are often inflexible and based on your credit rating – which works at your historical performance rather than looking at the value of your underlying assets.
 

Compare invoice finance with alternative funding methods

Just like other invoice finance companies, Close charges its clients fees, which depend on the size of your business, the value of your invoices and the time it takes to get money paid by your customers.  Visit our how our fees work page for further details.

Quite simply, because we don't want to give you an inaccurate or misleading figure. We need to understand the nature of your business, your customer base and precisely what you would like to achieve. This requires a telephone conversation or face-to-face discussion, so that we can provide a tailored quotation.

95% is the usual upper limit for the initial payment we make, with the remaining 5% being paid when your customer settles the invoice, minus our service charges. Service charges pay for the administration of your account, any collections fees and discount charges (like interest) on the money you draw down.

With Factoring, we process payments and deal directly with the clients who owe you money.
With Invoice Discounting, your business would have to perform all these functions. Factoring is an added-value service that is particularly useful for companies that don't want to merge these functions in- house.

We pay you up to 95% of the value of invoices the same day you raise them, so you have instant access to the money your customers owe you. We can set-up a new facility in as little as 2 weeks, subject to meeting certain criteria and will do our best to tailor our timescales according to your requirements.

Yes, we offer Export Invoice Finance, which works in conjunction with our invoice finance products and provides credit cover and direct collections for up to 30% of your export sales ledger in more than 50 countries worldwide.

A large part of our business is based on working in partnership with a whole range of advisors, including accountants, brokers, business and financial intermediaries to ensure we both fulfil the cash flow needs of the businesses we are working with.