Factoring and confirming activity reached almost 200 billion euros in Spain in 2021. This is the highest figure in the last five years. Specifically, the year ended with a volume of assignments of 199,364 million, 9.38% more than in 2020. These numbers denote "a robust growth even higher than the levels prior to the Covid-19 health crisis", according to the Spanish Factoring Association (AEF), given that the year 2020 ended with 182,264 million euros financed and 2019, with 185,559 million.
The AEF usually publishes annual statistics on the evolution of factoring and confirming activity in Spain during the previous year. These are very interesting data to observe and confirm the upward evolution of these financing instruments, in a market where companies are becoming more and more informed about the options available to them to obtain liquidity and about financing alternatives beyond banking.
Evolution of assignments in 2021
If we break down the 2021 data by category, 100,385 correspond to confirming and 98,979 to factoring. Confirming therefore accounted for 50.4% of total assignments, with a growth of 7.32% compared to the previous year. This is the first time that assignments have exceeded €100 billion since 2017 (the first year for which the Association provides data).
If we focus on factoring activity, which represents 49.6% of total assignments, the AEF provides some very interesting data. For example, it is worth noting that in 2021 the total number of assignments through this method of financing increased by 11.56%. Within Domestic Factoring, the Association's statistics show a growth of 18.37% in Factoring with Recourse in 2021, while factoring without Recourse decreased by 2.23%. As for international factoring, activity exceeded €29 billion, of which 88% corresponded to export factoring.
This is further evidence of the validity and effectiveness of factoring and confirming as instruments to support the financing of Spanish companies, both large companies and SMEs.
