Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
The number of overdue invoices in Scotland reached a 16-month high in February, according to new research from R3, the UK’s insolvency and restructuring trade body. R3’s analysis of data provided by Creditsafe shows that business in Scotland had 428,824 unpaid invoices on their books last month – the highest monthly total since October 2022’s…
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Small firms are hampered by late payments and have dampened growth expectations for 2024, according to the Small Business Index (SBI) for Q4 2023, published in full by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). The report is a temperature check of small firms’ sentiment and experiences at the end of last year, and analysis of…
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The cost of late payments to small businesses has more than doubled in two years, reaching £1.6 billion at the end of 2023, according to a report by Xero. The latest quarterly data shows small firms were paid, on average, 6.1 days late during the last three months of 2023. This figure shows no signs…
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Nearly one in three (31%) of business owners anticipate the potential closure of their businesses by the end of 2024 according to research by Novuna Business Cash Flow. Novuna says that the prospect of numerous businesses facing closure is sobering, a reality underscored by a recent ONS report, showing just 3% of businesses had temporarily…
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The levels of ‘critical’ financial distress jumped dramatically in Q4 2023, up 25.9% on the prior quarter (Q3 2023: 37,772), leaving more than 47,000 businesses near collapse in the UK at the start of 2024 according to Begbies Traynor. This represents the second consecutive period where critical financial distress has grown by around a quarter.…
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Nearly 4,500 retailers are in critical financial distress as lacklustre Christmas sales performances, combined with persistent inflation and interest rates at levels not seen in decades, pile on the pressure according to a report by insolvency firm Begbies Traynor. Critical financial distress rose considerably across the whole retail sector, with Food & Drug Retailers up…
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New analysis by the British Business Bank shows that the Government’s £47 billion Bounce Back Loan Scheme rescued around one in 20 participating businesses. The pandemic support scheme, which offered taxpayer-guaranteed facilities of up to £50,000 to business owners to help the firms survive lockdown measures, prevented the failure of between 5% and 6.5% of…
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New research by Kearney has found that the global share of ‘zombie companies’ has risen 5% year-on-year in 2022. The study shows a net increase of 95 zombies globally, rising from 1,893 in 2021 to 1,988 in 2022. The research estimates the number of zombie companies to rise by over a fifth (21.5%) across the…
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Analysis of the Bank of England’s data by Ebury has found that debt repayments halved in Quarter 3 (Q3) 2023 compared to the previous quarter with SMEs are continuing to pay down the significant debt pile accumulated through the pandemic. SMEs have accelerated debt repayments amid the soaring cost of borrowing as interest rates have…
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SME business owners have revealed that cash flow is the biggest challenge for nearly half of the respondents. Almost half (48%) of small to medium enterprises cited cashflow as the largest single challenge their business was facing, according to research by Millbrook Business Finance. This was followed by the cost-of-living crisis (32%) and energy prices…
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Bank-to-business lending is forecast to contract 0.5% this year according to EY ITEM Club, as economic challenges and high borrowing costs dampen businesses’ appetites to borrow. The forecast says net lending to SMEs has been much weaker than to larger businesses this year, with the latest Bank of England data showing loans to SMEs were…
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New figures released by the HMRC have indicated that the amount of tax owed to the Exchequer but remaining unpaid totalled £45.5 billion as of the end of September 2023, a slight reduction from the £45.9 billion balance for the quarter ending 30th June 2023 but still well above pre-pandemic levels. The total debt comprises £7.8…
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New research by NerdWallet has found that over half (55%) of businesses still have outstanding invoices from the last tax year (2022/23). The problem also seems to be getting worse with time with just under half (46%) of SMEs were left with more unpaid invoices at the end of the 2022/23 tax year than the…
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