Video transcript: Interview with Ian Dunford-Jones, Managing Director at Modified Solutions
I'm Ian Dunford-Jones, the Managing Director of Modified Solutions. We are a building fabric maintenance company. We work nationally and our annual sales turnover is 1.5 million pounds.
Originally the funding for the business was done personally, by myself, and it got to the point with the growth where I could no longer sustain that. We then started looking for an overdraft facility with a bank we were established with, on more than one occasion, which proved to be absolutely fruitless, so we looked for alternatives which is where we came across the Close Confidential Invoice Financing and that proved to be absolutely key to our growth.
The products we use are the Close Brothers Confidential Invoice Financing, the IDeal software and also the bad debt protection. Just to give you an idea of how we use the facility, we basically raise an invoice or a batch of invoices, we then put that onto the IDeal software system that Close run and then they release money against those invoices. They treat our invoices as the assets, rather than our buildings, our cars or our houses, and it really is that simple. We get a percentage of the value of those, depending on your industry, back straightaway. Same day, next day or a couple of days later.
We decided to use the bad debt protection because it actually does protect us against our clients going bust. You'll be paid for those invoices that are outstanding, or certainly a high percentage of them, and having had that experience before we feel it's a must in the current climate.
I believe confidential invoice financing is the fastest growing method of funding in the UK at the moment because traditional methods, ie. banks, overdrafts, that sort of thing, they've disappeared and they're much much harder to get and from our own experience nigh on impossible.
Close Brothers took time to understand our industry and that has enabled us to continue our growth trends without being shackled to a cash flow ball and chain.
In our experience, I could say to anybody looking into this facility, particularly with Close Brothers that a changeover from a normal overdraft to this type of facility is very very easy, and some people might find it daunting, but really there's nothing to it. Honestly, it's very very easy and we've even found it more cost-effective than an overdraft.
To be honest, we set the whole thing up in a matter of days we had the money drawn down on our current invoice ledger and away we went. And, people get a bit scared because I think they think they have to offer some kind of other security, other than your debtor book, which is your invoices effectively, other than your house or your car or whatever it's been, it really is that easy and there's nothing to be worried
about.
I would certainly recommend any other business looking for an alternative facility to look down the confidential invoice finance route.
