Ecgc In Pact With Theofinance For Value-Adds

Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India Ltd (ECGC) has entered into an alliance with London-based TheoFinance Plc to help companies involved in exports to reduce the time of payment for their goods and services.

The alliance agreement was signed recently between ECGC's chairman and managing director M A K Hakeem and TheoFinance Plc group director William Houck.

Disclosing this, ECGC's Ahmedabad branch manager said, "With its global presence and highly secure IT-link, TheoFinance will accelerate payment of invoices and bring down the time-lag from ten to three days."

Elaborating on the new facilities that would be available to exporters because of the said tie-up, Gupta said, "TheoFinance model creates a global extranet connecting client's finance departments to its credit controllers based locally and aims to speed up the whole recovery process by ensuring invoices are distributed locally and personal contact overcomes any language or cultural misunderstandings."

Revealing that Internet facility has enabled TheoFinance service to be rolled out across 31 countries, representing 87 per cent of all trade, Gupta said, "The service now involves clients transmitting a file of their invoice data, using a secure IT link, to TheoFinance. The latter then produces the invoices locally and mail them to the export customer. Then, the local TheoFinance office initiates a cycle of recovery activity in tune with the client's specifications."

TheoFinance's export services manager Narendra Dogra said that his company's services would increase its clients' cashflow by using its local offices to accelerate invoice payment and reducing the time-lag from ten to three days.

A simple procedure that stresses on making contact with client's customer before the invoice due date to verify acceptance of goods and validate invoicing achieves significant results, he revealed.

With over 25 per cent of business failures being due to slow invoice payment and growth of global trade forcing business to move away from cash on delivery or letter of credit, TheoFinance has developed a completely new approach to invoice management, Dogra claimed.