£8.5m International Invoice Finance Facility: IT Consultancy Case Study

Background

Our client is a UK-headquartered IT consultancy specialising in large-scale digital transformation programmes. The business delivers multi-year engagements for enterprise clients across the UK, continental Europe, and the Middle East, working across financial services, energy, and public sector verticals.

With a team of over 200 consultants and annual revenues approaching £40 million, the business had grown substantially over the previous four years. The majority of its contracts were with investment-grade clients, including listed corporates and government-backed institutions, giving it a strong receivables book but limited day-to-day liquidity.

The Challenge

The consultancy's growth was being constrained by a structural cash flow problem. Its clients, while highly creditworthy, operated on standard enterprise payment terms of 60 to 90 days. The business was simultaneously required to pay contractor and staff costs monthly, meet payroll for its permanent headcount, and invest in business development to win the next generation of contracts.

Its existing banking relationship offered a modest overdraft facility, but this was insufficient for the scale of receivables the business was generating. International invoices, particularly those raised against clients in the Middle East and mainland Europe, were excluded entirely from the bank's funding calculations, limiting the available facility to a fraction of the total debtor book.

The directors approached Spark Finance when the pipeline grew faster than the overdraft could support and a significant contract win threatened to create a serious cash shortfall.

Our Approach

The key challenge was finding a funder with appetite for cross-border receivables. Most high-street and challenger bank invoice finance products are limited to UK-domiciled debtors, which would have excluded a significant portion of this client's book.

We approached specialist international trade finance lenders on our panel and structured the facility around the full receivables ledger, including debtors in the EU, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The facility was structured as a confidential invoice discounting arrangement, meaning the consultancy's clients would continue to receive payment requests from the business directly, with no involvement from the funder visible to end clients.

The £8.5 million limit was set against a blended advance rate of 85% across the eligible ledger. A dedicated concentration limit was agreed for the three largest clients to ensure the facility remained within the funder's risk appetite while still providing meaningful liquidity against the largest contracts.

Outcome

The facility was fully drawn and operational within 22 working days of first enquiry. Initial drawdown of £3.2 million cleared the existing overdraft and returned the business to a positive cash position within the first week.

In the 12 months following completion, the consultancy used the facility to:

Looking for Invoice Finance for Your Business?

If your business generates invoices against creditworthy clients and is held back by slow payment cycles, invoice finance could unlock the cash already sitting in your debtor book. Spark Finance works with a panel of over 80 lenders, including specialists in international and high-value receivables.

Complete our short form and a member of our team will review your receivables profile and identify the most appropriate structure for your business.

What is Invoice Finance?

Invoice finance is a form of asset-based lending that allows businesses to draw cash against unpaid invoices, typically within 24 to 48 hours of raising them. Rather than waiting 30, 60, or 90 days for clients to pay, the business receives an advance of up to 90% of the invoice value from the funder. The remaining balance, minus fees, is released when the client pays.

There are two main variants: invoice factoring, where the funder manages collections on behalf of the business, and invoice discounting, where the business retains full control of its credit control function and the arrangement remains confidential. For professional services businesses with long-standing client relationships, confidential discounting is almost always the preferred structure.