In a scenario strongly marked by the Coronavirus pandemic, the factoring is confirmed as a support tool for the restart. Precisely for this reason Assifact - the association that brings together Italian factoring operators - addresses the government directly to expand state guarantees, remove obstacles to the transfer of corporate receivables from the public administration and simplify bureaucratic and operational procedures.
The Assifact 16 Annual Meeting was held today, Tuesday 2020 June, not only to disclose the results on the 2019-2020 trend and the elections of the members of the new Council, but above all to analyze the effects of the epidemiological emergency on businesses and how factoring could favor the restart of the Italian economy and the business system.
The Italian factoring companies, which move over 250 billion euros every year, equal to 14% of GDP, are committed to supporting their customers beyond the provisions of the Government provisions, especially with regard to the strong economic and liquidity tensions, declines in turnover, delays in payments and in the collection of trade receivables and payables, large exposures towards the PA, advances from the Redundancy Fund.
Assifact represents a sector that has more than doubled its turnover in the last 10 years alone: from 118 billion in 2009 to 255,5 in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 7,2%.
After closing last year with a increase of 6,44% compared to 2018, Italian factoring (35 business customers, 9,03% of the world market and 13,33% of the European market) started 2020 positively, with an increase of 1,68% in January and 1,18% in February , to stop with the spread of the Coronavirus, recording losses both in March (-0,45%) and in April (-5,53%).
As pointed out by the President Fausto Galmarini, which has been reconfirmed for the next three years, factoring companies "grant payment extensions, assessed on a case-by-case basis, to companies that find themselves in the continental condition of not being able to pay their trade debts as a result of the pandemic".
It is precisely on these bases that the entire sector is asking the Government to complete the framework of measures to support corporate liquidity. In particular, in view of the debate for the conversion into law of the next Relaunch Decree, Assifact proposes to extend the Sace guarantee, which the Legislative Decree introduced for "with recourse" assignment of receivables, subject to collection, also to "without recourse" ones, in which the risk of insolvency of the debtor is transferred to the factoring companies.
But also of also include the so-called captive factoring companies in the Sace guarantee, who carry out the same operations but are no longer financial intermediaries since the 2010 reform, because they operate within the exclusive sphere of production chains.
Among the requests, there is also that of repeal the provision contained in the art. 117, paragraph 4, of the Decree which for the payments of health institutions introduces the block or suspension of executive actions and the non-attachment of financial remittances transferred from the Regions to the companies of their health service. Defined by Assifact itself as unconstitutional, disproportionate and aimed at favoring possible opportunistic behavior by entities to the detriment of legitimate creditors.
Finally, Assifact also solicits a simplification of the bureaucratic process, to make credit assignment operations faster and more effectiveat no cost to public finance. One proposal concerns the possibility of transferring the amounts to banks and factoring companies in advance, receivables due from INPS by companies that have paid their employees the redundancy payment in advance and the creation of a digital platform for the transfer of credits, so as to streamline all operations.
