The economy is going through a difficult time, as a consequence the financial sector suffers. Since there have been records in the country, such a radical drop in consumer credit had not been observed; the amount of debt stood at $205.5 billion by 2023, a 3% drop compared to the previous year. Although this is partly explained by an increase in the interest rate, what is worrying is the increase in non-performing loans by 29.1%. This last data is from November 2023, given that the economic deterioration has accelerated in the last quarter, the next quarter is expected to be much worse. Despite this gloom, a ray of hope can be given to SMEs in factoring. Adjustments by the previous government in the DIAN consolidated this credit modality. Although it is not enough, it is a balm among so many difficulties.
Factoring allows suppliers of large companies to endorse invoices at almost the same price as their clients’ credit cost. If, for example, a small Éxito supplier sells you a product and the latter is going to pay you in 90 days, the supplier has the ability to sell this invoice to the third party at a discount. The supplier finances its working capital at almost the same cost as Éxito. The financial institution that lends resources may not lend to this small company, but it has no problem assuming the risk of Success.
When we created the factoring law with concepts such as tacit acceptance of the invoice and the value for it, we needed a mechanism that would track and validate the invoices. One of the most important achievements of the previous government was the implementation of electronic invoices. Fortunately for the country, the IDB’s technical capacity achieved this transformation when it modernized the DIAN at the end of the Duque government.
Within the framework of this new technological platform, RADIAN was launched, which manages the registration, consultation and traceability of electronic invoices. This mechanism eliminates the operational risks of factoring fraud by providing certainty about the current holder of an invoice, since sometimes the owner changes several times. If there are ten days left, the system notifies the issuer of the invoice, indicating who should pay it. In its first year alone, until August 2023, the system had registered 1.6 million invoices for $30.8 billion, of which 90.5% were used for credit operations with factoring. This is also possible because the judges did not fall into the traps of economic populism and are upholding the law.
With the challenges that exist in traditional banking, during 2024 factoring can be a blessing to be able to provide credit to thousands of companies. By attracting greater capital, we hope that not only will it be possible to service smaller bills, but that the available issuers will not only be those that are AAA. This tool should even be extended to drafts to offer credit to natural persons. By putting all payrolls online, the DIAN could offer the certainty about payrolls that factoring offers today. In this economic crisis, few measures are as cost-efficient as this one to alleviate the pockets of Colombians.