"According to my knowledge receivables securitisation is not a tool used in Spain for SME finance.
It’s only used by some big corporates, some of them going back and forth, which means that sometimes they switch from factoring to securitisation and sometimes visa versa.
Probably one of the reasons for the lack of interest from Spanish small businesses in receivables securitisation is their size: what is considered a Medium company in Europe is a big one in Spain. As such, most of SMEs in Spain are just too small to enter securitisation schemes.
The product has been used for some years for the big corporates, with the banks feeling more comfortable and they can even get solvency ratings on these businesses from specialised companies. But banks don’t want to make a step down and offer the product to smaller companies; hence SMEs don’t see securitisation as a financing option for them.
Will it ever happen? Maybe, but I don’t see it happening in the coming years, and if I had to bet I would say not in the next decade. We need at least 3, 4 or 5 years more to reach the economic and financial situation of 2007, and only then we will see (or not) a change in the attitude of banks.
At the end of the day banks grant trade receivables securitisation programmes only to companies, which they are sure will never reimburse their invoices. They provide this facility knowing that everything will go smoothly and they won’t have to bare administrative charges. In fact, the securitisation departments are separated from factoring units and they don’t have their own recourses for debt collection. In case they ever need to make a collection they will have to transfer this task to the factoring collections department of their banks. However, there is a great probability that the latter won’t be able to cope with this tsunami of invoices to collect."