18th May 2021
An award-winning recruitment agency has used Reach Commercial Finance to secure a six figure (£450K) invoice finance deal, part of which is a (£150K) Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan, to help get the business back on track post-Covid.
The Blackburn-based agency specialises in engineering and manufacturing recruitment and has been successfully matching job‐seekers with hiring employers throughout the North West of England for over a decade.
Covid-19 hit the recruitment industry hard. A Grant Thornton survey (August 2020) said the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the sector had been significant, affecting businesses’ entire operations from financial planning and cashflow management to people management, communications and technology.
The agency’s directors, facing chronic uncertainty during lockdown, reluctantly took the decision to try to keep as much revenue in the business as possible to see it through an unprecedented trading period, but as recovery started they needed to address the creditor position.
Introduced by accountancy firm, Ainsworths, Gary Cain from Reach, took on the brief. He knew from experience that many traditional lenders were lacking in appetite in sectors like hospitality and recruitment. The company had already approached the bank for a CBIL and had been declined.
He commented: “We had to take a much wider view. In the end we approached a CBILS-accredited lender, but with the receivable angle alongside. The willing lender was Aldermore who provided the best fit and was eager to support the business.”
Francesca Loughlin, Business Development Manager at Aldermore, said: “This was a great opportunity to back a local business which has had to steer itself through a challenging period as a result of the pandemic. The business has a strong management team behind it and a solid plan of action to navigate the next 12 months. I was able to work closely with the director to understand their future business plans and provide a facility that will help deliver their growth ambitions.”
Directors at the agency said that trading through the pandemic had been a difficult period for the firm, but the funding deal would now enable to get the company back on track and commercial relationships restored.
One commented: “We are grateful to Reach and Aldermore for their understanding of our business, its decade-long investment in service quality and the opportunities we could see in the future which they too embraced. We look forward to coming out of this pandemic, fitter, wiser and with renewed commitment to making the business a continued success.”