On the other hand, innovative solutions are growing, albeit starting from much lower volumes: reverse factoring, the system with which suppliers enjoy the highest creditworthiness of the customer, jumped by 13% to 7.5 billion euros, confirming, more supply chain tool, earns 7% to 800 million, invoice trading 20% to 300 million.
Dynamic discounting, the technological solution that allows advance payment against a discount from the supplier, is experiencing a real boom, with a growth of 500% albeit at a low value of 100 million.
According to estimates, innovative solutions now cover between 4 and 5% of the potential supply chain finance market in 2020, confirming the continued expansion in recent years: they accounted for less than 1% in 2015.
«Supply chain finance is today more and more a managerial tool to support supply chains, a strategic lever of companies for better risk management and an increase in resilience – says Federico Caniato, director of the Supply Chain Finance Observatory -. In the management of the pandemic, it has often been applied beyond the first level of supply, proving to be an important tool to support the liquidity crisis, also financing orders or stocks. It is essential to improve the synergy with the risk management process, because the number of companies that use it exclusively to optimize working capital is still high ».
In recent years, selling on credit has become a fundamental commercial tool also at an international level, whose risks can be mitigated by specific supply chain finance solutions, underlines the Observatory. But Italian companies know little about them: 54% of Italian exporting companies ignore them, 22% use them only in the national market and only 24% use them in export operations.