Singapore, 19 January: The educational arm of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the ICC Academy, has expanded its flagship Certified Trade Finance Professional (CTFP) programme with an advanced-level e-course on Factoring. The curriculum is designed for professionals working in banks, financial institutions, and fintechs.
Factoring— the practice of selling the invoices to a third party (factor) to obtain immediate cash —has changed since its inception and is now offered in a number of varieties, including international factoring, distributor factoring, construction factoring and reverse factoring.
According to a recent report, the global factoring market is poised to grow by USD $1457.01 bn between 2021 and 2025, decelerating at a compound annual growth rate of 7.48% during the forecast period.
Commenting on the launch, ICC’s Global Partnerships & Development Director Julian Kassum, said: “Over the last decade, the factoring industry has undergone a significant transformation. Given the increase in demand for factoring, and the rising number of professionals who will need to upskill their working knowledge, we have developed a Factoring e-course to ensure our certificate programmes offer a complete range of courses that meet today’s business needs.”
Factoring has traditionally been regarded as a financing option for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), but now larger corporations also use it as an asset-based financial arrangement. This, paired with the need for MSMEs to find alternative sources of financing and manage their liquidity more efficiently, will give factoring the much-needed boost and likely considerable growth in coming years.
Taken independently or as an elective of the CTFP, the e-course provides a comprehensive understanding of factoring, including its types and applications, pre-activation, monitoring, and daily transaction controls.
Course author Kheng Leong Lee, who is the Asia-Pacific Representative of HPD Lendscape said: “Due to some very recent high profile receivable financing fraud cases in Asia, factoring appears to be on the high-risk side with the potential for a factoring agreement going wrong. However, if you take case studies from other continents like Europe, it has been proven that the risk of factoring is low, provided it is well managed with an efficient risk management system. The ICC Academy’s new Factoring e-course aims to cap this gap, as it covers the end-to-end process of factoring – from marketing and operations to sellers and buyer management and risk mitigation.
Mr Lee added: “Factoring, in general, is often being marketed under different names such as accounts receivable purchase facility, debtor finance, receivables finance, receivables service, cashflow financing, invoice financing, and supply chain financing. Professionals enrolling in this course will gain an in-depth understanding of all aspects of factoring; from the factoring fundamentals, legal and accounting aspects to unfactorable debt and its risk mitigation, as well as learn how to sell factoring more effectively through need-based selling, objection handling, and probing questions. In addition, to help candidates put theory into practice, the e-course includes real-world examples in the form of detailed case studies.”
The curriculum is delivered via the ICC Academy’s innovative digital platform, which is accessible on every mobile device. Additionally, the online course offers features, such as a searchable course glossary, a quiz review dashboard for assessment tracking, achievement badges, automatic bookmarking , and pre-assessment games.
The e-course has been accredited by the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT), Institute of Banking & Finance Singapore (IBF), and Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA).
The Factoring e-course is available as an elective for the Certified Trade Finance Professional (CTFP) programme or can be purchased on its own for USD $200. Enroll today.
*Professionals who have enrolled into the CTFP programme can now choose the Factoring course as one of their electives, unless they have already made a selection of all the four electives.
For more information, please contact
Priyanka Satapathy
Communications and Events Manager
Priyanka.Satapathy@iccacademy.com.sg