Supply Chain Resilience and Small Suppliers
A Bruising Market Hits the Smallest Hardest Peter Jacobstein, Chief Strategic Partnership Officer, The Interface Financial Group January 12, 2021 | A recent Harvard Business Review article paints a dire picture for small and mid-sized suppliers (SMEs), and for the larger companies that depend on them. “A Financial Crisis is Looming for Smaller Suppliers[1]” argues […]
Virtual Cards and Early Payment Solutions
PETER JACOBSTEIN, Chief Strategic Partnership Officer, The Interface Financial Group February 10, 2020 B2B Virtual Card (V-Card) payments are attracting a lot of attention right now — from incumbent commercial payments providers and from fintech who want to challenge their dominance. Accenture estimates Virtual Card B2B payments were $207 billion in 2019, or […]
Risk Management in Early Payment Solutions
PETER JACOBSTEIN, Chief Strategic Partnership Officer, The Interface Financial Group January 14, 2020 Buyer-led early payment programs are growing fast. Fully 55% of companies surveyed in PWC’s 2018/2019 Supply Chain Finance Barometer are running some form of early payment program. Broadly, as Buyers extend their payment terms, offering early payment is a critical part of […]
LIBOR Phase Out: Considerations for Supply Chain Finance
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group September 19, 2019 LIBOR has been the default benchmark interest rate for supply chain finance since this technique was developed approximately 20 years ago. By year-end 2021, LIBOR will be phased out. So how does this impact supply chain finance? For a market […]
What Happens When Machine Learning Finance Models Fail
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group September 3, 2019 These are some strange times. Look, we have $16 trillion of negative-yielding bonds, that’s T, for trillion. I’m asked by non-financial people why anyone would want to buy negative yields (you pay to hold them, btw) and I reply, it’s not about income, […]
Large Companies Lack Cash to Fund Their Supply Chains
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group August 13, 2019 The popular opinion has been that many large American companies are flush with cash. In fact, surveys from some reputable institutions support this view. The AFP’s corporate cash survey found during the second quarter of 2019, U.S. businesses continued to build their cash […]
Can Source-to-Pay Networks Go Beyond The Approved Invoice?
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group June 11, 2019 “The phrase ‘it’s better to be lucky than good’ must be one of the most ridiculous homilies ever uttered. In nearly any competitive endeavor, you have to be damned good before luck can be of any use to you at all.” ― Garry Kasparov, “Deep Thinking: […]
Blockchain and Digital Invoice Finance — What’s Missing?
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group July 2, 2019 What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient … highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. — “Inception” (2010) Similar to an idea in the movie “Inception,” […]
Is There a Tech Solution for Supplier Portal Proliferation?
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group May 14, 2019 When we look at source-to-pay solutions, we tend to look at it from one side, that is, how this is going to improve the accounts payable department, reduce cost, be more efficient and improve supplier collaboration. But then I hear quotes like this […]
Is Supply Chain Finance Pricing Mispriced?
DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group April 5, 2016 Funding has grown more sophisticated with supply chain finance programs to large companies, driving margins down in many cases. There are several interesting issues around pricing: Platform providers make money on transactions not explicit charges for their sales, marketing and onboarding efforts. […]