Four Factors And An Economy
Posted November 14, 2010 – 6:58 am in: LoansFor this year’s Factoring Issue, ABF Journal tells a tale of four factors doing business in a down economy. Each brings a unique set of skills and a different approach to their respective factoring practices and, at the same time, each shares a common commitment - to keep the wheels of commerce turning in good times as well as bad.
Plans for itself and its division is not unreasonable as it had been fortunate from $750,000 to $1 million. SFS has a diverse portfolio with customers enough to avoid exposure to subprime assets. ranging in every industry, excluding construction. The largest industry the
Its parent has been on an active growth path as well. Established in accounts receivables, to small-and medium-sized companies from Albany, MN, in 1912, Stearns Bank is a nationally chartered bank that startups to established businesses with facilities ranging from $200,000 has assets in excess, Bell says, of $1.2 billion. The company’s growth to $15 million. However, Bell says the average deal size usually ranges
Jeff H. Bell Esq. founded Stearns Financial Services (SFS) six years ago as a division of Stearns Bank, and the unit has been on a path of consistent growth ever since. Even in these times of economic stress and downsizing, SFS has aggressive plans for the future - with a possible extension into asset-based lending.
build a sales force and pursue strategic acquisitions. SFS has business development offices in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Ohio, and recently added new locations in Illinois, Virginia and Georgia, and hired three additional BDOs.
Stearns Financial provides working capital facilities, based on
And it’s not only that wise choice that keeps the company running forward, it’s also, Bell says, the fact that the bank “is not a brick and mortar bank, or a full-service bank. Instead Stearns focuses on niche products that Norm Skalicky, its chairman and CEO, believes offer higher yield and earning opportunities than traditional bank products.”
The bank also operates a successful small-ticket equipment leasing operation, and it was his wish to extend into another niche, Bell says, which led the bank to start a factoring division.
Bell launched the factoring unit as executive vice president. Previously, he had founded a bank - Transportation Alliance Bank - for Flying J Inc. That venture had a factoring portfolio in excess of $75 million in outstanding purchased receivables by the time Bell moved on to start SFS, a de novo operation, with Carolyn Passey, VP of operations. She joined the group after working for Summit Financial Resources.
Currently, SFS’ portfolio consists of about $55 million in outstanding purchased receivables.
Since May 2003, the company has purchased and collected more than $1.5 billion in accounts, without incurring any losses in its portfolio, Bell notes. The division has returned an average of 6.5% annually ROA to Stearns Bank.
Last year, SFS hired Kei Lehigh as its senior vice president and national business development manager. Previously, Lehigh served in a similar role at Wells Fargo Business Credit, and will help the company
company represents, Bell says, is staffing, but it also has clients in IT consulting, transportation/freight services, and government contractors, among others.
Although Stearns Financial is a bank-run factor, Bell explains, “We’re really kind of our own little island. It’s like we have a lender that just happens to be a bank even though we are a division of the bank.” He adds, “Mr. Skalicky was wise enough to realize that bankers are not factors. Their mindsets are completely different and they approach credit and lending from very different perspectives. Instead of launching SFS with his current bank managers, which would be like forcing a square peg into a round hole, he hired a management team of factoring professionals.
SFS has the luxury of available funding and low cost of funds that are enjoyed by banks, but is run as a true factoring operation.”
Being part of the bank, he says, Stearns Financial has funds at its fingertips when other factors are seeing restricted availability. “The bank has pulled back dramatically in almost all areas of lending,” Bell says, especially in SBA loans and real estate development loans.
“The only divisions they’re encouraging to grow
… is us and the small-ticket equipment leasing
division they own. They just see them as areas that
are given higher returns than the rest of the bank.
Knock on wood. Our six-year track record shows
that we deal with fairly little risk through them.”
Bell notes that SFS maintains a 23% tier one capital ratio, which is four times the capital required by the FDIC to be considered a “well considered” institution. “We are on a very aggressive growth path,” he adds.
Going forward, Stearns is always looking to expand itself, Bell acknowledges, and says, “SFS is on a path of rapid growth pursuing new fundings and acquisitions. We have already set benchmarks for when our portfolio will reach $100 million and $150 million in outstanding receivables. As we mature, we will continue to look for new opportunities and products. Our natural evolution will be into the broader arena of asset-based lending. We are also developing rediscount facilities to assist those factors who are having difficulties in funding and growing their portfolios.” That move into asset-based lending, he is quick to note, is being considered as the business matures. “We do, on occasion, advance against inventory as well. We’re factors, so we’re hesitant - but it’s kind of a natural evolution.”
For now, though, factoring is where SFS wants to be. According to Bell, factoring offers borrowers the flexibility and availability of capital to grow their businesses - as the lines are capacity-based - and grow with companies instead of working against them.
“In this current economic climate, factors and
ABLs are being transformed from lenders of last
resort to valuable lending partners who are not
afraid to extend credit to businesses despite the
doom and gloom swirling around…”
While the unit is new, the product offering is not: in a way, the company has come full circle. Before founding BFEC in 1968, the late Adolf “Sonny” Monosson cut his teeth in the finance industry as principal of a factoring company; and BFEC has offered accounts receivable financing on-and-off throughout its 40-year history.
“The first company my father owned and ran was a factoring company back in the 1950s; he always liked that side of the business,” says Monosson, who now serves as BFEC’s president and chief executive officer.
But it’s as a lessor of information technology equipment that the company made its name. Over the years Boston Financial has provided equipment leases to companies such as AOL, Earthlink and The Sports Authority when they were just startups, as well as to established companies like Greyhound and Rite Aid. It continues to be a significant player in the small-to mid-ticket IT space.
As Monosson explains it, in the mid-1990s hoping to leverage this experience, BFEC re-entered the factoring space to capitalize on the absence of ABL lenders catering to technology startup companies. But as it became apparent that the Internet boom was leading to skyrocketing demand for the company’s leasing services, the factoring unit was put on “the back burner.”
Fast forward to 2008: the U.S. economy is mired in recession, banks are pulling back on lending and businesses are scrambling for funding. Monosson says the time was right for refocusing the company’s efforts on the ABL space. “We realized there was a hole again in the ABL business, and there still is in the sense that there are not a lot of companies doing these smaller deal sizes,” she says.
According to its marketing materials, Boston Financial Funding will engage in factoring deals ranging from $100,000 to $1.5 million,
“SFS views itself as a lending partner with its borrowers. We are there focusing on an array of industries. Monosson says that in light of the to assist and facilitate growth. We truly want our clients to succeed. And current economic climate, companies are facing fewer and fewer options as a factor, we are not just a fair-weather friend. Our borrowers can count for obtaining necessary financing. on our continued support despite the challenges they may face.”
Looking at the industry as a whole, Bell thinks right now is a
“I think it’s a great time for lenders like us because
“fantastic time for factoring,” and adds that as traditional lenders tighten their belts, and downsize portfolios, it presents great opportunity for the factoring industry. However, the challenge in to book quality business. “The traditional factoring model of weaker clients with strong customer bases cannot be relied on. Account debtor stress is at an all-time high, which requires increased vigilance in operations, credit, verifications and collections.”
Bell explains that working with banks to exit the borrowers has become increasingly challenging of late. “Getting workout officers to be realistic about their position can be difficult. The banks made their traditional loans during the economic boom time. Getting them now to agree to a partial pay down and term out of their loan in return for releasing their lien on the accounts receivable of a borrower takes a significant amount of negotiating.” He adds that deals that used to take three or four days to complete, are now taking closer to a month to come to fruition. “Deals are definitely out there, but they are taking longer and longer to close.”
Debbie Monosson, president and chief executive officer of Boston Financial & Equity Corporation (BFEC), talks about taking over her father’s business and the launch last fall of Boston Financial Funding - a new asset-based lending unit focused on providing accounts receivable financing to underserved businesses.
Sometimes the best way to retool a business is to go back to the beginning. That’s just what equipment leasing firm did when, last fall, it launched Boston Financial Funding.
while the banks are doing some lending, they really don’t like the smaller deals and particularly the smaller companies that aren’t making money.”
Despite having taken on a visible role in the finance community over the past two decades, Monosson says it wasn’t always her interest to enter the finance industry and follow in her father’s footsteps. While Sonny Monosson was establishing himself as something of an icon in commercial finance, Debbie went to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, with the intention of becoming a commodities broker. Her first job was with
E.F. Hutton, and two years later she went to work for Dean Witter. “I was in the stock brokerage business for about six or seven years and decided it was not for me,” she recalls. “So I left and went to business school full time. I wanted to get into marketing.” Monosson got her
M.B.A. from Boston University and, deciding soon after that she wanted to learn sales, went to work for her father. “It just so happened that my father had a salesperson leaving, so the timing was right,” she says, explaining her decision to join BFEC. “I decided I would try it and see if I liked it and have now been here 20 years.” In September 1989, Monosson joined Boston Financial & Equity Corporation full-time as a national accounts executive. Over the next ten years she would move to vice president of sales and marketing, senior vice president and finally take over the helm of the firm in 2000.
Sonny Monosson passed away three years later, and since that time, his daughter has set about filling some very big shoes. The recent ABL unit launch is surely something her father would be proud of.
Monosson says Boston Financial Funding is digging a niche for itself among underserved companies on the small end of the deal spectrum. “It just doesn’t seem to me that there are very many people doing deals in the $100,000 up to $1.5 million range,” she says. What’s more, BFEC’s decades of experience in the technology sector offers a degree of knowledge and credibility that other lenders are lacking.
“There are a lot of lenders that just don’t like
technology. I think because we’ve been working
with technology companies all these years on
the leasing side, we’re more open to providing
receivables financing to them.”
To lead the new unit, Monosson tapped Russell Baird, a career asset- based lender and entrepreneur, and a long-time colleague of Monosson. Baird started his career with Bank of Boston, and worked at several Boston area banks before starting his own company, Beacon Business Credit with two partners. Beacon was bought in the mid-1990s by Norwest Bank, which was subsequently acquired by Wells Fargo Bank.
“Russ has been on my board for seven years and when he sold his last company a year ago we sat down,” says Monosson. “He wanted to get back into the asset-based lending business and I wanted to ramp up that side of it so it worked out for both of us.”
Baird sees in the current economic environment endless opportunities for alternative financing companies. “I believe the market for providing asset-based financing to small middle-market companies has been underserved for some time, and I look forward to the continued flow of
and knows its value within the commercial finance industry - especially
opportunities we have been seeing through the balance of this year at
in times likes these. He describes factoring as a simple process - the
the very least,” he says.
buying of invoices and collecting them. But deep down, it’s more than
Monosson says since its launch, Boston Financial Funding has been
that - and that is what JD Factors keeps close watch over. “It’s a real
busy doing deals, though she’d rather not say how many.
specialty, what we do. You have to know all the ins and outs of what
“Deals are being done, we are spending money. We’ve done a plumbing company, a steel company, a company that manufacturers crutches; both manufacturing and service companies.”
Anyone who knows Debbie Monosson also knows she is highly committed to the concept of association. She is active in a number of trade groups in both the leasing and ABL worlds; she currently chairs the board of the Commercial Finance Association, and previously served as CFA president. She is also active in the Equipment Leasing and Finance Foundation; the National Equipment Finance Association (formed by the merger of the UAEL and EAEL); and the Association for Corporate Growth, among others.
“I’m a huge advocate,” Monosson says. “I’ve cultivated many relationships from working in associations. No matter what association you belong to - I think, in this economy, they are more important than ever before because they give companies support.”
Steve Johnson, president of JD Factors, proclaims that factoring is in his blood. After graduating with a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Redlands in 1975, Johnson went to work as vice president of USLIFE Savings in Los Angeles for six years, before heading to Mercury Savings in Huntington Beach, CA, as a vice president for another six years. He was then appointed as a vice president at Los Angeles’ California Commerce Bank until 1990 when he joined Riviera Finance.
His father-in-law, John Danis, founded Riviera Finance in 1969 and ran it with partners until his passing in 1998. At that time, a partner of the company acquired Danis’ wife’s share of business, taking the U.S. operations. In 2000, Johnson and his family started JD Factors, which included Riviera’s former stake in the Canadian corporation headquartered in Toronto that Johnson was running from Los Angeles. The Canadian operation, he says, “pretty much ran itself, but the challenge was starting the U.S. side of the business again.”
As it got the U.S. side up and running, JD Factors brought on Bo Kelly as executive vice president handling Sales & Marketing. On the operations side, the company retained Chip Wiley, as senior vice president charged with heading up the Chicago office.
Over the past nine years, the company has added business development officers to cover the rest of the country and Canada. JD Factors now has four operations offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and Montreal, with four sales offices in Tampa, FL; Portland, OR; Marlton, NJ; and Delight, AR.
Johnson notes that the company’s average deal size is $150,000/a month, but will do deals as large as $2 million/a month. The factor provides financing for startups to more established businesses and covers a variety of industries, Johnson says, except construction and medical receivables. JD Factors also utilizes brokers all across the country as a referral source, with the company’s business development officers cultivating those relationships.
In the current economic climate, potential borrowers need cash and they need it now - and that’s why factoring can be an attractive option, especially to small-to medium-sized clients and startups.
Johnson has been in the factoring business for a number of years
needs to be done in order to provide good service to your clients.”
Compared to a bank, he says, JD Factors can evaluate and fund a deal quickly.
“We can put a deal together that a bank or an ABL just can’t do… We don’t have the necessity of seeing profitability in a company like a bank does.”
Factoring, he notes, is simpler. “Our repayment is coming from [our customers'] customers, not from them. We’re looking at who their customers are - the account debtors - and that is our source of retainment. That’s what makes factoring work for a lot of small-to medium- sized businesses. I think, especially now in this economy, what we’re seeing is that companies need cash flow - that’s the bottom line.”
He adds that he feels banks are cutting back in their lending, bringing more business to factoring. “The economy has changed from [the bank's] standpoint of wanting to lend to anybody. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of deals coming out of banks right now.” For JD Factors’ customers, deals are still getting done. “We’re still seeing a pretty good flow of business and a lot of deals are doable… It’s kind of creative times right now.” But that doesn’t mean the company should try to pull magic out of a hat in order to close more business in this downtime. “That’s what is dangerous about where we are right now,” Johnson warns. “People that are trying to pull things out of a hat, that’s the wrong approach to what we’re doing in business right now from a factoring standpoint. We need to stick to what we know works.”
Johnson notes the reason the company is so successful is because it provides superior customer service. “Providing service levels as high
as we can to our clients - that’s the name of the game.” The company maintains this level of service with constant communication and enhanced technology. According to Johnson, every client has an account executive that is in contact whenever it’s necessary - and in some cases that means daily. As clients are funded on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, constant communication is crucial. “It’s a people-intensive business,” Johnson admits.
He also recognizes that technology has become increasingly important to keep the business running smoothly, and ensuring increased customer support.
“We have invested heavily in our ability to provide
technical support to our clients. They have online
access to their account information. We’ve looked
at additional services that we can provide to them
with our systems.”
Having this technology basically at a customer’s fingertips, provides another challenge - ensuring that it’s always up and running. The company has three separate backup systems running in its Toronto, Chicago and Los Angeles offices. After learning from experiences over the years such as the Northeast blackout in 2002 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 where some of the company’s competitors suffered due to down technology, JD Factors has taken these steps to ensure the backup systems are always running.
For the near future, Johnson notes that the company wants to maintain the consistent and managed growth it’s seen in its first nine years. So
faced the challenge of reinventing itself, which it
far this year, he says, there’s been a drop off in business, but adds that the dip is mostly seasonal, and is common during the first few months of did by diversifying into a variety of businesses, most the year. “I’ve been tracking these things over the past eight years - we notably financial services.
always have a little dip in our business in January/February. This has been a bigger dip so it’s not just the traditional seasonality of it, there’s the
Today Bibby bills itself as one the largest independent invoice finance
economy that’s causing a bigger dip at this time. I think we’ll rebound as the year goes on. The seasonal part of the equation will come back but I don’t think we’ll see any great growth this year. It’s a crystal ball… We do exactly what we always have done and that is put on good business and we’ll ride through this one just as we have any others.”
As far as any major plans for expansion, Johnson notes that for this year, the company will be sticking “to the basics of our business and we know we’ll get through this year and into the next and keep on going.”
In looking at the industry as a whole, Johnson admits, that for pretty much everybody the plan for this year is just surviving, noting that it will indeed be a slow year. “It’s going to be challenging for small-and medium-sized business so it’s going to be challenging for factors because those are our clients. Just because there is a slowdown in the economy in general, I don’t see that we change what we do. We still hold to our policies and procedures, we know what works for factoring and we stick with that. We continue to look at credit, evaluate account debtors and we’ll be fine.
“Volumes are going to drop off,” he foretells. “You can’t just jump into a deal because you need to put more business on - it’s got to be the right deals in this business. I think we’ll see less business but it’s anybody’s guess. I wish I could read the economy any better than anybody else, but the government doesn’t know and I don’t think Wall Street knows either.”
Even with all the trials and tribulations that have already happened and those that are yet to come, Johnson sees one thing as being absolutely more important than anything else - the people that work within
the industry. “I think the most important aspect of our company, our industry, is the people. Our employees - they’re our biggest asset… It’s the relationships that we develop with our clients, even our competitors. It’s a great industry. While what we do is buy invoices, really what we do is provide employment for a lot of people and help a lot of businesses. That’s more important than the money side of the business, in my opinion, it’s the people.”
Stewart Chesters, the CEO of Bibby Financial Services North America, says times could not be better for factors. Since launching its expansion campaign in 2001, UK-based factoring giant Bibby Financial Services has broadened its reach on four continents.
It’s often said that the British Empire was built by its ships. In a way, the same thing could be said about Bibby Financial Services - which is today something of an empire in the financial services industry, with subsidiaries in Europe, India, Australia and North America. The UK-based company had 43 companies across 11 countries, according to its most recent 2008 annual report.
But it was parent company Bibby Line Group, which more than 200 years ago began its long history as a global shipping concern, and made the financial services division possible. Bibby Line has a storied history on the seas. For decades its ships plied the waters of the world’s oceans, assisting the British Navy when it was required to. Four of its vessels even took part in the D-Day landings in northern France in 1944.
But like all great empires, by the 1980s - with the golden years of ocean shipping long past - Bibby
providers in the UK. According to the company, Bibby Financial Services provides cash-flow funding for nearly 3,000 businesses, handles annual client turnover of more than 3.4 billion ($4.8 billion) and advances more than $400 million every year to help small-and medium-sized firms grow.
In the United States, Bibby provides receivables funding services and purchase order financing for both domestic and export receivables. The unit is headed up by Chesters, a British native who got his start with the company when it was still solely active in the UK.
Since January 2008, Chesters has served as chief executive officer of Bibby Financial Services North America, prior to which time he held a number of roles of increasing responsibility with the company.
In appointing him to lead the company’s North American operations, David Robertson, CEO of Bibby Financial Services Group, called Chesters an “integral part” of the company’s success. In fact, as Chesters tells it, he has been part of Bibby’s global expansion from the beginning.
After receiving an M.B.A. from Aston University in Birmingham, UK, Chesters first got acquainted with factoring on the client side of the industry. Following a brief stint as an accountant, Chesters headed up a contracting firm that provided external maintenance for strip malls and business parks. “We were growing very quickly so we actually used factoring as part of funding our growth,” he says.
After selling that business, Chesters worked for five years in the public sector as a business-planning consultant to two government agencies that were looking to apply a more corporatist structure to their operations.
When Chesters joined Bibby Financial Services in 2001, the company had not yet embarked on the global expansion plan that would make the company what it is today. But Chesters says it was clear the company had outgrown its UK roots.
“It was quite an exciting time. They were about to implement their global strategy - they looked at the UK factoring market and saw that in the next four or five years it was going to start reaching maturity, and they realized that what they needed to do was to go out to new markets.”
Chesters says that from his first days with Bibby he was encouraged to take charge, and to apply his expertise in corporate development to his new role. He found the challenge exciting.
“They had this empowering culture; they would take you in and essentially let you run projects and eventually take ownership of one of those projects and run with it,” he says. “You had that energy, that looking forward vision, and that pretty much enthused me.”
The very first project Chesters was given at Bibby was to lead the company’s inaugural U.S. acquisition of a Columbia, SC-based company, which subsequently became Bibby’s West Palm Beach office (actually located in Boynton Beach, FL).
Chesters went on to become an integration manager for Bibby Financial Services, charged with overseeing the smooth transition of the company’s acquisitions into the Bibby fold. In 2004, he was given
Chesters says he was only planning to stay in the U.S. for two years, but after falling in love with the city of Chicago, he and his wife decided to stick around. Soon he was promoted to chief operating officer for all of North America, and thereafter was offered the CEO job.
Bibby’s North American expansion program has paid off, and Chesters says the company has experienced a 30%-50% average annual growth rate. Beyond Chicago and West Palm Beach, Bibby Financial Services has what Chesters calls “autonomous business units” in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Phoenix and Toronto.
“Small business like to have a direct relationship with the people that are funding them. Often when people say ‘we’ve got an office in L.A., we’ve got an office Dallas,’ that usually means they have a salesperson and a couple people to help them. We actually have a full executive team, a full credit team and a full sales team at each office.” Like other factors, the company is heavily focused on the staffing and trucking sectors, but Chesters says Bibby Financial Services is also active in several other industries.
“We have a fairly large base of manufacturing clients and we’re starting to see more apparel deals, particularly on the West Coast,” Chesters says. “That market used to be dominated by larger funders … and they’ve really been rolling back and that’s left a gap in the market, particularly for $1 million to $5 million facilities.”
Bibby is more than willing to fill that gap, he says. And in this challenging economy, the company certainly has its hands full.
“We actually had a record new business month in February,” Chesters says. “We are seeing more business come to us that normally would have been bankable. This is a very good time for factors.”
the opportunity to come to the U.S. to oversee the company’s purchase Amanda L. Gutshall and Christopher Moraff are associate editors of of the factoring division of CIB Marine Bank - CIB Marine Commercial ABF Journal. Finance, which was located outside of Chicago, in Hillside, IL.
With the CIB Marine Commercial Finance acquisition, Bibby Financial
Services hit its stride and began to pursue more aggressive expansion.
“We had implemented what we call a ‘toe-hold strategy’ where for the first couple of years you intentionally do small transactions; before you start pumping capital and risk into the market you get an understanding of the market - what the risks are, how the legal process works,” he said. “In 2003 and 2004 we started to push out the growth.
The ABF Journal is the only independent trade publication serving the Asset Based Lending and Factoring industries. The mission of the print magazine is to consistently satisfy the informational need of its readers.
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