C A S E S T U DY
FACT FILE COMPANY: EUROPLUS DIRECT LTD ESTABLISHED: 2004 ANNUAL TURNOVER: £8m SECTOR: IT warranty contracts MARKET: International
“We chose to work with Coface because they could cover our international trade for a competitive price.” Rob Jobbins, Finance Director.
In brief: Europlus Direct didn’t offer credit terms on the IT warranty contracts it supplied for companies such as IBM and Lenovo. But as the company grew and developed long-term business partnerships, it came to require a cost-effective and flexible insurance solution to protect its overseas transactions. Coface’s solution for SMEs proved to be the obvious choice for both Europlus Direct and its subsidiary, One Global.
Business challenge: For many years, Yorkshire-based Europlus Direct had no concerns about bad debt because its customers in Europe, Australia and Africa paid in advance for their IT support contracts. These were often one-off transactions but as the company grew, Europlus Direct established an increasing number of longer-term partnerships with IT distributors and suppliers who were keen to benefit from its multi-lingual expertise and global network. It made sense to set up credit accounts for its regular business.
Europlus Direct was understandably keen to protect this area of the business as Finance Director, Rob Jobbins, explains: “Our registered business partners around the world now represent around 40% of our customers, compared with 10% just a few years ago and this trend was the main driver for us to look into credit insurance last year.”
C A S E S T U DY
Coface solution After researching the options, Europlus Direct chose Coface’s solution for SMEs, a policy for businesses with insurable turnover of up to £10m. Europlus Direct can protect its domestic and export trade and use CofaNet, Coface’s online policy management tool, to request credit limits and submit claims information in the event of client insolvency or non-payment. Debt collection and litigation support are also available although Europlus has not yet had cause to use either. Europlus Direct’s policy also covers its subsidiary, One Global, which specialises in the recruitment of multi-lingual staff and the provision of professional translation services. Established in 2008, One Global’s regular clients are predominantly UK companies with international operations.
“The Coface policy was really easy to set up and it’s also easy to manage as in most cases we get instant credit limits online. Overall, our experience has been fantastic so I would be happy to recommend Coface” Rob Jobbins, Finance Director.
So what were the factors that ultimately convinced Europlus Direct to work with Coface? Rob Jobbins sums up the company’s thinking: “One: Coface could cover our international trade which was critical because over 90% of our business is conducted outside the UK. Two: we were swayed by the price of the Coface policy which was lower than the competition. Three: we were impressed with the online request and monitoring service. And four: Coface was flexible about allowing us to extend the policy to One Global which made our investment more cost-effective.”
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