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Proactive management of working capital has become essential to a company’s fundamental survival, financial growth and the operational success of its business. Lack of working capital can pose a hindrance to the company’s comprehensive growth and also affect the satisfaction and productivity of its employees. In order to ensure that a lack of working capital never becomes a barrier to growth, Tony Duggan (CEO at Crossflow) ideated a process that can plug the existing gap.
While working for a corporate, Tony was regularly surprised at how suppliers responded while talking about increasing volumes. He reflected on the frustrating reality that not all suppliers have the working capital to support growth, and in many cases, lost the opportunity for their business. Designed and developed by leading industry professionals during a 4-year R&D process, Crossflow–The Working Capital Marketplace landed in the market in 2014 with a vision to transform access to working capital and support the financial efficiency, transparency, and sustainability of global supply chains.
Crossflow, through its research and development focused on ensuring that a theirplatform was robust, secure, and best-in-class. The company then designed the service to go through the key R&D growth stages of “crawl, walk, run” so that learnings from each stage were built into the technology and operations of the business. “We took time to get things right and this patience in building the business laid a solid foundation from which we are now seeing the benefits. This, combined with the scalability of our platform has enabled Crossflow to go from strength to strength as we now enter the accelerated growth phase of the business,” remarks Tony.
Crossflow is a global working capital marketplace, connecting corporates to a wide array of funders, providing them access to best-in-class tech-driven optimal financing solutions. It is a risk prudent, fully automated, and highly secure transactional system. As a leading FinTech company, it is solving real-world problems by allowing excess working capital to be channeled from funders and financial institutions through a highly resilient and fraud adverse framework aligned to international regulations. The company’s solution delivers increased working capital positions for corporates and their suppliers.
Crossflow recognizes its platform as the company’s crown jewel while standing unrivaled in the industry. The company sees other operators more as payment providers which are somewhat different models, but this can result in a cost-heavy business if the underlying technology is not right. In fact, the poor scalability of many publicly listed fintechs reenforces even further the approach taken by Crossflow to ensuring scalability, security and resilience.
Crossflow requires minimal human oversight—its solution is fully automated from end-to-end which completely eliminates the chances of human errors and builds in far greater security. The company has also developed purpose-built algorithms and deployed AI and machine learning to provide robust risk and control measures for its employees as well as its clients. Besides its unique technology, Crossflow stands out in the crowd with its highly diversified funder base. The company’s funders include financial institutions, hedge funds, and pension schemes that remove the concentration risk and enable clients to access financing at highly competitive rates.
Speaking of the company’s most popular product, Tony adds, “What our clients love about Crossflow is the flexibility and transparency of our services, putting them in control of when they wish to release additional working capital.” For instance, in the case of Invoice Finance, a supplier can choose a value they wish to release and Crossflow’s system will propose suitable outstanding invoices that can be financed and a clear view of the exact cost of the finance. The company’s algorithm selects the lowest possible rate of finance from its community of funders and the supplier can have the cash in their account within just 48 hours.
Crossflow’s speed and flexibility are beneficial while considering the seasonal nature of several suppliers’ businesses because it ensures they are not missing opportunities due to short-term cash flow challenges. Substantiating further, Tony adds that several suppliers have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and it can be challenging for them to access working capital to help them organize production as demand returns to the market. The main differentiator from typical supply chain finance services is the recourse is against the corporate payer of the invoice, not the supplier. The arrangement is secured with very little disruption to the suppliers.
To date, Crossflow has been successfully delivering to its commitments and leveraging advanced technology to bridge the existing gap of working capital and cash flow. The company has scaled success with its best-in-class platform that provides solutions to real-world problems developed and supported by great engaged people who believe in the success and direction of travel of Crossflow.
Moreover, Crossflow has been lauded with several accolades for its distinguished services and solutions. In 2017, Crossflow was awarded the ‘London Stock Exchange Elite Company’ status The company has since been ranked as the the 8th fastest growing company in Europe and No 1 in Fintech by the Financial Times Crossflow was also selected by PWC as one of the 10 FinTechs rapidly transforming the financial services industry. In addition, Crossflow was also featured by the City of London as one of four cases leading fintech’s in its Global Cities launch.
Insight and breadth of experience has been key to the development of Crossflow. This has ensured we built a solution that meets client demand within a technology framework that provides security and scalability. The contra to that is that you build a service with poor security which cannot scale, the economics cannot work, jeopardising clients reliance on that service for working capital. Aside from a strong pipeline of new clients, we have new working capital solutions set to launch in the coming months including the provision of pre-shipment finance and a new blockchain finance initiative all supported by AI automation solutions.
