Expertise at Incomlend: How We Make Invoice Financing Work

February 1, 2023

In fintech, there are many platforms that are made by what you could call mercenaries. In other words, these business leaders primarily built the business to seize upon a financial opportunity that they recognized in the market. In all likelihood, they want to scale the business, gain the expertise and eventually flip it to another larger corporate buyer.

These types of business leaders often have technological skills and business acumen, but they lack the deep domain expertise to truly solve their space’s problems. Domain expertise is necessary, after all, to build a solution that is customer-centric.

This is not the case at Incomlend. Since the company’s founding in 2016, the organization has amassed a wealth of talent. These are not just engineers, and these are not just salespeople. There is a concentration of domain expertise related to the four areas that are necessary for a truly customer-centric invoice financing platform: supply chain, financing, investing, and technology.

By documenting our expertise, we hope to convey to potential users of Incomlend that this is a trusted invoice financing platform, owing to the fact that we understand the problems of our users and we have the skills to address them.

Supply chain

Mastering the supply chain cannot happen overnight. Many of the team at Incomlend has experience working in the supply chain of larger corporations, or even at importers and exporters. As a result, we understand their pain points, most especially as it relates to working capital. Both sides of the supply chain are locked in a push-pull battle for working capital that harms both parties.

Although they deliver goods immediately, exporters may not be paid for as long as 90, 120 days and sometimes even more. This makes their working capital highly cyclical – there may be periods where they are flush with cash and periods where they are severely lacking, due to the cadences of these long payment periods. The same goes for importers, who may need capital to pay off their trade partners.

At Incomlend, there is a deep understanding and expertise of the struggles in cash flow that both importers and exporters face.

Financing
The team at Incomlend are not just experts in invoice financing but in all financing. There is strong knowledge, in particular, about bank financing and the associated challenges that come with it for small/medium businesses. When seeking trade finance through a bank, most importers and exporters struggle. To begin with, the requirements are substantial – the amount of paperwork required would trouble even a large corporation. The terms may also be highly in favor of the banks, such as requiring collaterals.

Even in the few cases where enterprises meet these requirements, there is a high opportunity cost. They may need to wait as long as several months for their cash to arrive in their account. In the event they are not approved, all that waiting has now amounted to a large opportunity cost: The time they spent applying could have been used for other means of enhancing their financial position.

The Incomlend understands the inaccessibility of bank financing, which strengthens the team’s resolve to make working capital more accessible.

Investing
An invoice financing platform cannot work with only importers and exporters. For an invoice financing platform to work, there need to be investors who are willing to finance invoices. For there to be investors, the platform must take into consideration their unique needs, so they will be attracted to provide financing on your platform versus others

Incomlend understands the needs of investors, as many of our team members come from retail or institutional investment backgrounds. This is reflected in our platform and through our expertise. Investors who sign up have high flexibility: They can choose whether to invest in receivables or groups of receivables and when to do so. As a result, they gain access to a risk-adjusted asset class that can offer stable returns.

Because Incomlend understands the needs of investors, they will not be in short supply on the platform. There will be enough importers, exporters, and, most crucially, investors, for the ecosystem to continually succeed on a day-to-day basis.

Technology

While most mercenaries approach platform-building from a purely technological perspective, the importance of innovative technology should not be discounted. The team at Incomlend shares this belief. Our tech team at Incomlend is composed of many talented engineers, web developers, UI/UX specialists, data scientists, data analysts, and another technical talents.

The calibre of our tech team is evident in the product itself. While it would have been very easy to make a complex product – since enterprises are accustomed to bloated software – the team made a platform that is arguably as easy to use as any mass-market consumer product. For instance, importers and exporters can inquire about their eligibility with a few easy clicks. When they are approved, they can just upload the documents required along with the receivables that they wish to factor in. This ease of use is as much a philosophy as it is product-driven: One of our missions at Incomlend is to make it as easy for businesses to obtain the working capital they need. This mission can only be accomplished through intuitive design, scalable engineering practices, and innovative features.

Through the unique combination of expertise in the supply chain, financing, investing, and technology, the Incomlend team has quickly built a platform that truly speaks to the unique needs of customers.