Deal spotlight: a £2m invoice finance facility for a 30-year-old staffing business

Weekly payroll, 38-day payment terms, and a loan holding growth back

We recently closed one of our larger invoice finance facilities this year: £2m for a recruitment business that has been trading for more than 30 years.

The challenge

Every Friday, the business pays around 800 temporary workers, chefs and catering staff placed into schools and public sector kitchens across the UK. Its customers take 38 days on average to pay. With the April 2025 rise in employer National Insurance Contributions also squeezing margins, the gap between paying people and getting paid had become the biggest pressure on the business.

To bridge it, they’d taken out a short-term loan with heavy monthly repayments. It kept things running, but took a large chunk of cash out every month, just when the business needed it to grow.

What we did

• Put in place a £2m facility that funds against the whole sales ledger: 1,500+ invoices a month across around 250 customer groups.
• Refinanced the loan in full at completion, so the fixed monthly repayments stopped.
• Built drawdowns around their payroll: ledger uploaded Thursday morning, funds out that afternoon, Friday’s payroll covered.
• Verified invoices against their own CRM and timesheets, so the team didn’t have to change how they work.

Working capital should follow the invoices, not sit on top of the business as term debt.

Allica and Kriya, working together

The business already banked with Allica Bank. Their relationship manager spotted the need, and the Kriya team structured and underwrote the facility. A bank balance sheet with fintech execution is exactly what bringing Allica and Kriya together was meant to do.

Thinking about invoice finance for your business?

If you run a recruitment or staffing business and your cash flow looks like this, find out more about Kriya Invoice Finance or get in touch with our team.

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