EU Federation for the Factoring and Commercial Finance Industry

In recent years, the Factoring industry has experienced remarkable growth in activity, resulting in 2008 in a world total business volume of EUR 1,325 billion, compared to EUR 760 billion, five years earlier. Fifty seven percent of industry players are specialized bank subsidiaries, twenty four percent are bank divisions and nineteen percent are non-bank institutions. It is estimated that the Factoring and Commercial Finance Industry employs over 80,000 people.

The figures for the EU countries are even more encouraging as the 2008 volume of EUR 833 billion clearly illustrates that with 75% of the world volume, the European Factoring and Commercial Finance Industry has already the deepest market penetration compared to other industrialised geographic areas. However, with many EU countries, in the early stages of a growth cycle, the potential for factoring and commercial finance to grow, pushing billions of additional funding into the EU, is in strong contrast to the traditional banking sector.