Despite the difficult economic and social environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian factoring market’s volume expressed in the country’s currency increased by 15 per cent in 2020, and funds in use (FIU) at year-end increased by 38 per cent exceeding RUB 1tn for the first time, explain Corneliu Robu, CEO of GPB-factoring. In many ways, the difficult economic conditions contributed to a wider spread of factoring and especially supply chain finance instruments, which turned out to be a very efficient facility for supporting SME suppliers to large corporates.