On May 9 and 10, the XLVI Assembly of the Spanish Factoring Association was held at the Hotel Real in Santander. This is a fundamental meeting of the commercial finance sector in our country, which was once again sponsored by Alvantia.
The event was opened by Enrique Conde Tolosa, president of the CEOE-CEPYME of Cantabria and Carlos Dalmau, president of the AEF. Following Conde’s presentation, which highlighted the main strengths of the Cantabrian economy, Dalmau presented the latest data for the sector, which volume of loans managed exceeded 270 billion euros in 2023. While growth has been lower than in previous years, mainly due to high inflation, these figures indicate that the equivalent of more than 18% of GDP Spanish is ceded and managed through operations of Factoring and Confirming. The expert thanked the attendees for their presence at this meeting, which was the largest to date and attended by its 20 members. This number of members has been reached after the recent incorporation of Ibercaja and Banco Cooperativo.
After, Alma María Abad, chairwoman of the ESG Commission of the AEF, presented the main challenges faced by companies in the sector when dealing with ESG regulatory policies. In this regard, she stressed that the European Union was visionary in making certain sustainability regulations mandatory for financial institutions, as this is an effective way of gradually implementing them in all companies and ultimately granting better financing conditions. He also stressed the importance of the dictionary and taxonomy, which are key to defining which activities are considered sustainable finance.
During the second day of the assembly, the round table “Factoring and Confirming: a view from the perspective of users in the construction sector” was held. Carlos Dalmau, Ignacio Sagarminaga, Chairman of the AEF Legal Commission and the LPR Commission, and Mariano Sanz Loriente, Secretary General of the National Construction Confederation, discussed the impact of these financing products on the construction sector. According to the experts, this sector is mainly dominated by SMEs (70%), where there is great competition, very tight margins and a liquidity problem that most small companies do not solve through Factoring and Confirming because they are unfamiliar with these products.
The event ended with an exhibition by Sofia Rodriguez, Chief Economist of Banco Sabadell, who reviewed the economic outlook for 2024. With respect to the Spanish economy, Rodriguez indicated that despite all the challenges the country is facing (fiscal pressure, public debt, political uncertainty and productivity problems, among others), it is evolving more favorably than forecasts had predicted, maintaining an astonishing resilience.
