EUFactoring launches with eight national associations representing nearly 80% of EU market

EUFactoring Association has formally launched in Brussels as a new representative body for the European factoring and commercial finance industry, bringing together eight national associations that account for almost 80% of the EU market.

The founding members represent Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain and together cover 151 factoring companies.

According to the association, those companies generated more than €867bn of factoring turnover during the first half of 2026, equivalent to nearly 10% of EU GDP over the same period.

That gives the organisation substantial industry weight from launch and places it at the centre of several regulatory debates with direct implications for receivables finance providers and their clients.

EUFactoring said its priorities include challenging bans on the assignment of receivables, pushing for capital requirements that better reflect what it describes as factoring’s low-risk profile, and advocating proportionate anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules.

Assignment restrictions are particularly significant for the sector because they can prevent or complicate the transfer of trade receivables to a factor. The association argues that this can restrict access to working-capital finance, particularly for SMEs.

The new organisation has also taken over a number of tasks and objectives previously handled by the EU Federation for the Factoring and Commercial Finance Industry, which was dissolved in June 2026.

Its launch comes as factoring remains a significant source of business liquidity across major European markets. EUFactoring said Germany, Italy and the Netherlands alone have more than 150,000 factoring clients.

The organisation will represent national factoring and commercial-finance associations before EU institutions and aims to influence regulation affecting receivables finance, factoring, supply chain finance and related forms of commercial finance.

Fausto Galmarini, chair of EUFactoring, said the organisation’s objective is to provide the industry with a coordinated European voice and ensure regulation reflects the specific characteristics of factoring and its contribution to business finance.

For the sector, the importance of the new body lies in its potential to shape rules that directly affect the ability of companies to assign receivables, the amount of regulatory capital financiers must hold and the compliance burden attached to commercial-finance products.

With eight national associations already representing the large majority of the EU market, EUFactoring begins with a sufficiently broad base to become a significant interlocutor between the industry and European policymakers.