Bibby Financial Services
The UK's largest independent invoice finance and ABL provider, serving SMEs and lower mid-market businesses across receivables, assets, and working capital.
What they do
Bibby Financial Services (BFS) provides working capital finance to UK businesses primarily through invoice discounting, invoice factoring, and asset-based lending packages. Their core product is an advance against a client's trade receivables ledger — typically 80–90% of eligible invoices — structured either as confidential discounting or disclosed factoring with optional credit control outsourcing. Alongside receivables finance, BFS offers asset finance (leasing, hire purchase, refinancing of hard and soft assets up to £5m), construction finance against payment applications, recruitment finance, stock finance, export finance, and foreign exchange. They market explicitly to the M&A and restructuring segment, including management buy-outs and acquisitions funded via ABL.
Where they fit in a lower-mid-market raise
BFS is the natural first call for a lower mid-market business whose primary funding need is working capital tied up in trade receivables — particularly where the ledger is spread, the sector is operationally intensive (construction, recruitment, transport, manufacturing), or the business is in transition (MBO, acquisition, restructuring). Their independence from the clearing banks is a genuine advantage for businesses that have outgrown their bank's appetite or are in a situation the bank finds uncomfortable. For a 3–15m facility, BFS can provide a full ABL package combining receivables and asset finance, giving a single-counterparty working capital solution. They are a practical fit where speed, sector expertise, and flexibility around ledger composition matter more than headline margin.
Where they are not the fit
BFS is not a term debt lender and cannot provide acquisition finance, capex loans, or growth capital in the conventional sense — their structures are working capital instruments that revolve against assets or invoices. Businesses without a meaningful trade receivables ledger (SaaS, IP-heavy, property) will find little fit. Their pricing is characterised in the market as above-average among invoice finance providers, so price-sensitive borrowers with a clean bank relationship and a simple ledger may find a clearing bank facility cheaper. BFS does not provide mezzanine, unitranche, or equity-linked instruments.
On the record
Bibby Financial Services Limited is incorporated in England and Wales, company number 03530461, registered at 3rd Floor Walker House, Exchange Flags, Liverpool L2 3YL. Incorporated 13 March 1998.
BFS is a subsidiary of Bibby Line Group, a Liverpool-based family business established in 1807, currently in its sixth generation of family leadership and operating as approximately a £1.2bn group business.
BFS describes itself as the UK's largest independent invoice finance provider, supporting over 8,000 business customers and funding more than £9bn of client invoices annually.
In May 2025, BFS announced a £700m three-year securitisation facility, with Lloyds, HSBC UK Bank, Bayern LB, and funds managed by Insight Investment as lenders, described as providing capacity to support UK SME cashflow.
BFS's invoice finance products (factoring and discounting) release up to 85% of invoice value, usually within 24 hours of setting up the facility.
Asset finance (leasing, hire purchase, refinancing) is offered for hard and soft assets up to £5m, covering vehicles, plant and machinery, and over 100 soft asset categories.
BFS explicitly markets to the M&A and restructuring segment, including management buy-outs, and states it can structure ABL packages combining receivables and asset finance for mid-market businesses.
Core sectors served include construction, recruitment, transport/logistics, manufacturing, and wholesale — with dedicated sector teams for construction and recruitment, both of which involve non-standard invoicing structures.
This profile is a curated reference note drawn from public sources, not financial advice or a recommendation. Appetite and terms change; a lender's fit for a given credit is established by approaching it, not inferred from a page.