Whilst December would normally be pretty quiet it has started in a fairly busy way although with Christmas Party season in full swing I don think this will continue.
A couple of enquiries this week and a number progressing, albeit slowly. Interestingly, every enquiry currently on the books, bar one, represents an existing invoice finance client looking for a new deal and this is not a satisfactory state of affairs. New clients are needed not just the same clients moving around the system.
It was hoped the ABFA statistics for Q3 2015 would be out by now to reveal the net gain, if any, of new clients using asset based lending facilities, but comment will have to wait til next week.
Meanwhile the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee voted in favour yesterday, by a margin of 8 – 1, of keeping Base Rate at 0.5%. The one dissenting voice, an habitual dissenter from recent meetings, proposed a 0.25% increase, reasoning that the increase was manageable given favourable lending conditions, i.e easily available funding, faced by the business community.
Given the way votes go at these meetings my guess is that it will still be sometime before there is any interest rate rise. My prediction is likely to be more accurate than those expert economists, asked annually for their predictions who have got it wrong every year since 2009.
The Christmas Party beckons……
