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RBS Invoice Finance (Facflow) Review

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Late payments can choke your cash flow. So rather than wait for funds tied up in unpaid receivables, invoice financing can help keep you on track. Here, we take a look at RBS Invoice Finance (RBSIF) — as part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, RBSIF has some serious clout and is one of the largest invoice finance providers in the UK.

RBS Invoice Finance services & benefits

RBSIF offers two invoice financing options: invoice factoring and invoice discounting.

In both, RBS will provide up to 90% of the total value of an invoice when you issue it, within as little as 24 hours. Once your customer pays the invoice, you’ll receive the remaining amount minus any service charges.

The key difference is:

With invoice factoring, RBS will collect money on your behalf. Your invoices will be paid payable to RBSIF. To access this service, your business must have a turnover of £250,000 to £6.5 million.
With invoice discounting, you collect your invoices. This means RBSIF will need to see evidence of ‘robust ledger control’, established credit control processes and will take your debtor book as security. Your turnover must also exceed £300,000.

Whichever you choose, you’ll get an appointed relationship manager to help you manage your invoice financing needs. Plus, the digital savvy among us can use RBSIF FacFlow; a comprehensive online system which enables complete, 24/7, hassle-free invoice finance management.

Through the FacFlow portal, you can submit invoices, make requests and receive payments on the same working day. You can also submit adjustments to your ledger. True, the interface is dated — and FacFlow won’t work on your phone — but its benefits far outweigh these drawbacks:

FacFlow provides an all-in-one dashboard, where you’re only one click away from payment availability information and transactions records from the past 13 months.
Using FacFlow is fully paperless, freeing your business from invoicing paperwork (something we can all get behind!).
And if you have difficulties, the RBS website has full training via comprehensive guides.

How much does RBS Invoice Finance cost?

What RBSIF charges will depend on your turnover and your business. As such, RBSIF does not publish their fees publically — to discover your fees, you’ll need to contact RBSIF and receive an initial indicative offer.

As a ballpark figure, though: the average invoice financing provider charges between 0.03 to 5% of your annual turnover, and a discount charge of between 1 and 5% above the base rate.

Are they right for my business?

If you meet the £250,000 turnover requirements and want a quick solution to late invoice payments, they should be on your shortlist. Thanks to its transparent access to your invoice financing information, RBSIF is a strong invoice financing option.

However, as fees are undisclosed, we can’t review how competitively priced they are. We recommend speaking to an advisor and getting an indicative offer to compare with other providers.

RBS Invoice Finance reputation

RBSIF has an excellent reputation in the industry, winning awards such as ‘Best in Asset-Based Lending and Invoice Finance 2015’. What’s more, its FacFlow platform has been accredited by the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), under its IT Accredited Product Scheme.

But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that online reviews of RBSIF are mixed, with customers criticising the bank’s slow customer response time. Despite other banks offering 24 hour response times, it looks like RBSIF still only promises responses within 5 days which is disappointing.

Other invoice finance firms to consider

Hitachi Capital UK – its ‘Inspired Cashflow’ product, which has clear fees and no long-term contract, is certainly worth a look (take a read of our review, here).
MarketInvoice – note: there’s only invoice discounting on offer here. But with low turnover requirements of £60,000, this funding is very accessible for small businesses. MarketInvoice also has a reassuringly high Trustpilot score of ‘Excellent’ (4.5/5).

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