How a Bank Guarantee Letter Can Help Your Business

Are you running an import or export business? Are you worried about not getting a break from suppliers and vendors you haven’t transacted with yet? Credibility is an important element in determining how successful you’ll be in finding opportunities for trade. If this is the case, how can you inspire the confidence of other businesses if they have no experience to base their opinion on yet?
This is one of the scenarios in which a bank guarantee letter will prove to be of tremendous help. It allows you to engage in transactions with confidence. You can conduct business despite the fact that you have yet to establish a relationship with the other party. Bank guarantee letters and standby letters of credit are designed to help suppliers and vendors in purchasing or selling goods in the international arena by reducing the risk taken by the other side.

Although these two financial instruments are similar in a variety of ways, it’s important to note their differences so you’ll know which to use, and when. Basically, a bank guarantee letter reduces the loss if the transaction doesn’t go as expected while a letter of credit ensures that the transaction will go just as planned.

What exactly does that mean? A letter of credit is an obligation the bank takes to pay once its criteria are met. When certain terms have been completed and verified, the bank will provide the funds to ensure payment. Meanwhile, a bank guarantee ensures a sum of money to a beneficiary. Where the sum is only transferred when terms are met in a letter of credit, the sum is only paid to the beneficiary if terms are not met by the other party in a bank guarantee.

For example, a seller may ask for a letter of credit before the transaction occurs to ensure payment. On the other hand, a bank guarantee comes in really handy when the buyer experiences cash flow problems and can’t pay or when the supplier fails to provide the goods. It serves as a safety measure for the other party in the transaction.

A bank guarantee enables you to negotiate well with buyers or suppliers by offering them protection in case of non-performance in a contract. This allows you to boost your credibility and conduct business with confidence even in situations where you have yet to establish a relationship with the other party.
Financial guarantees, non-financial guarantees, and standby letters of credit are the basic guarantees commonly offered by financial institutions to help businesses in situations involving new trading partners. Learn more about bank guarantee letters here.

The Best Prepaid Mobile Plans That Work Best For Everyone Especially Working Moms

One of the most indispensable things in this 21st century living is the mobile phone. People just don’t seem to function without it. No matter where they go or whatever they do, they have it by their side. Be it personal or for business purposes, mobile phones just serve a lot of uses which makes a lot of people depend on it.

For working moms, phones are a huge help especially for the kind of work they juggle with everyday. If they can’t get home on time to prepare food for the family because their hands are tied at work, they can simply make use of the phone to get help to arrange everything for them. Also, if they are stuck in heavy traffic and are already running late to pick up their kids at school, they can just call the school to make sure their kids are well taken care of while still waiting for them to arrive. Indeed, what a joy to have phones these days. Truly, mobile phones are indispensable.

However, you can only make good use of a mobile phone if it has good service and good service would mean your phone has a mobile plan. Mobile plans enable your phones to be fully useful especially if your goal is to connect with people.

Mobile plans come in two kinds. One is prepaid and the other postpaid. When it comes to freedom and control, most people prefer the prepaid mobile plans. Also, the best prepaid mobile plans have a lot more to offer.

Free texts and calls. If you are the kind who loves to constantly contact their loved ones or would love to hear regular updates from family, prepaid mobile plans offer free texts and calls especially for the same network. Without spending too much, you get to contact them regularly.

Freebies and discounts. Some of the mobile service providers partner with other businesses resulting to offering promo codes for discounts on their customers. Any customer of the service provider can take advantage of this perk.

Spend within budget. The good thing about the best prepaid mobile plans is their fees are set monthly so customers will have an idea how much they will be charged for the service hence, they can spend within their budget and no longer has worry if they will go beyond it which mostly cause families to live uncomfortably in the long run. Also, since this is prepaid, you don’t have to worry of having to pay monthly for the service you are using.

With these and a lot more advantages offered in using prepaid mobile phones, it’s definitely a good choice to use one.

Mistakes Individuals Make When Opting For Liquidity Management In Banks

There are numerous financial services individuals can opt for in order to improve their profits and to secure their finances. And, one of the most common options individuals most especially investors choose is liquidity management. In banks, liquidity management is essential to allow individuals to check local and international aggregate liquidity, regardless of currency, and including additional information such as your internal interest rates and lines of credit. Unfortunately, there are cases when individuals make mistakes in choosing such service. Below are some of the following mistakes.

Not conducting regular assessments

One of the mistakes individuals make when opting for liquidity management is they do not conduct regular assessments. Surely, evaluating the financial performance of banking institutions can help you make better decisions. However, this industry continues to evolve, so there are instances when you need to consider other factors. Because of this, individuals need to conduct regular assessments to ensure that they can get the most out of their assets and to avoid unexpected risks.

Neglecting different approaches in conducting

The next mistake that individuals make in choosing liquidity management in banks is they often neglect different approaches in conducting. Of course, you assess banks to determine if they can provide you with the best services, but using a single approach cannot provide you with the results you are looking for. To avoid this, individuals must consider several techniques in evaluating liquidity management solutions. Some of the techniques you may consider are Ratio Analysis, Horizontal Analysis as well as Vertical Analysis. By having better options in conducting assessments, you can have better insights about the bank’s ability.

Forgetting to create a risk management plan

Another mistake that individuals make in opting for a liquidity management is forgetting to create a risk management plan. To ensure that investors can gain the best benefits, most banking institutions provide risk management plans. Sadly, there are still cases when these plans cannot accommodate your needs, which can cause dreadful effects on your finances. With this, individuals need to create their own risk management plans to increase their financial security.

Not considering other service providers

Finally, some individuals also do not consider other service providers. As mentioned above, there are numerous banking institutions that offer liquidity management services, but there are only a few that can provide you with the best services. Thus, it is best to invest in time to search for reliable providers to attain the benefits they are opting for.

Knowing all these mistakes will allow individuals to ensure that their finances are safe and secured which can help them improve their lifestyle.

Source: www.business.hsbc.ae is an institution that offers effective financial services to help individuals become financially stable. Know more on this site.

Ways In Protecting Working Capital And Cash Flow

To ensure that your business can become successful, it is essential for business owners to have a good working capital and cash flow. However, there are issues that can affect these factors which can make ruin your business. To avoid these issues, it is important to look for ways on how to protect working capital and cash flow. Below are some of the following.

Keep a close watch on merchandise

One of the easiest ways to protect working capital and cash flow is to keep close watch on merchandise. As a business owner you need to make sure that you can prevent negative cash flow. And, the best way is to watch your merchandise. To do so, business owners need to make sure that they make regularly check their inventory list. In this way, business owners can make better approach in selling these items. This can be achieved by giving clients discounts on these items. As a result, stocked merchandise can be sold which can help improve your cash flow.

Control yourself in buying items

In order to improve business reputation and efficiency, making use of the latest and most effective items and systems is important. However, there are cases when business owners cannot control themselves in buying items. Plus, some retail businesses provide enticing deals which can make purchases more expensive. Not to mention, some business owners purchase items that are not important for their business. Thus, to avoid this, it is important for business owners to focus on purchasing essential items to allow them to better working capital and cash flow which can help them make their business more profitable.

Improve product presentations

To gain better cash flow from your products, it is also ideal for business owners to improve product presentations. This is important since some clients judge products on its presentation. So, the more enticing your product is, the more chances of selling it. Apart from that, make sure that your products can provide the benefits it boasts of to ensure that clients will continue purchasing it.

Work with reliable financial institutions

Finally, in case that you still experience a hard time improving your working capital and cash flow, the last option is to work with financial institutions. These institutions can provide you with a lot of financial options that can match your business needs. In addition, some financial institutions also offer management systems to make financial tasks easier.

By knowing these tips, improving working capital and cash flow for your business can be easier and more efficient.

Source: www.business.hsbc.com.eg/en-gb/capability/working-capital is a website that offers reliable services to improve working capital which can help increase business cash flow.

Opting For An Interest Rate Collar

If you are a borrower who wants to ensure your interest rates are protected, there are several different tools that you can opt for. An interest rate cap, for example, is one of them. It protects borrowers from soaring market rates. On the other hand, if you are the other party who want to protect your interest rates as well by presenting the minimum rate that your borrowers must pay regardless of the lower fall for the market, you should opt for interest rate floor. And when these two are in place, an interest rate collar is best recommended.

An interest rate collar is the simultaneous purchase by the borrower of a cap and sale of a floor. This simultaneous purchase of the cap and the floor is effective for the same duration specified in the contract. In the business side, this is usually done to lower the cost of the premium rate that the borrower must pay while at the same time insure that it won’t get affected by the drastic movement in short term interest rates.

While borrowers enjoy the significant fall in market rates, they also tend to protect themselves against the rising interest rates by buying themselves a cap. To learn more about the interest rate collar, you should first know the following:

- It carries a prepayment risk
- It requires credit approval
- It is secured by the note of the underlying financing
- It entails borrowers to be prepared to shoulder the unwind cost upon an early termination should rates fall.
- It allows borrowers to realize a gain should rates rise
- It follows standardized documentation

borrower has what is called a Zero Cost Collar in the event wherein the premium of the floor is the same as the cost of the cap. It is equivalent to an interest rate swap wherein the simultaneous purchase of a cap and sale of a floor a floating rate loan is converted to a fixed rate one.

While this is not usually done because there aren’t many strikes that are well-supported, this happens from time to time. Most people prefer to use the collar strategy over the corridor simply because they worry over possible rate hikes.  Most of these floor participants are also inclined to sell a floor to reduce their costs than to offer another cap with a raised strike. And so, opting for an interest rate collar seems to be the best choice for most borrowers.

Facts About Accounts Receivable Financing

Whether accounts receivable financing is an old financing strategy, it still works these days. Accounts receivable financing together with factoring and asset based financing are all the same thing. In simple terms, the process follows these steps. A business sells and delivers a product or service to another business. The customer receives an invoice. The business requests funding from the financing entity and a percentage of the invoice (usually 80% to 90%) is transferred to the business by the financing entity. The customer pays the invoice directly to the financing entity. The agreed upon fees are deducted and the remainder is rebated to the business by the financing entity.

How does the customer know to pay the financing entity instead of the business they are receiving goods or services from? The legal term is called "notification". The financing entity informs the customer in writing of the financing agreement and the customer must agree in writing to this arrangement. In general, if the customer refuses to agree in writing to pay the lender instead of the business providing the goods or services, the financing entity will decline to advance funds.

Why? The main security for the financing entity to be repaid is the creditworthiness of the customer paying the invoice. Before funds are advanced to the business there is a second step called "verification". The finance entity verifies with the customer that the goods have been received or the services were performed satisfactorily. There being no dispute, it is reasonable for the financing entity to assume that the invoice will be paid; therefore funds are advanced. This is a general view of how the accounts receivable financing process works.

Non-notification accounts receivable financing is a type of confidential factoring where the customers are not notified of the business' financing arrangement with the financing entity. One typical situation involves a business that sells inexpensive items to thousands of customers; the cost of notification and verification is excessive compared to the risk of non-payment by an individual customer. It simply may not make economic sense for the financing entity to have several employees contacting hundreds of customers for one financing customer's transactions on a daily basis.

To sum it up, "notification" should not be an issue in most situations involving accounts receivable financing while non-notification factoring is another option that is available for businesses concerned. This is with confidentiality that meet minimum credit standards for asset based lending.

Learn more about account receivable financing and how can ithelp your business here.

What The Best Business Credit Card Can Offer To Expanding Companies

A business has different goals. One of these is to eventually expand and be a brand that can be known nationally and even internationally. But to achieve this goal, a business needs the right amount of funds to grow and expand their operations.

Growing or expanding business operations always require some form of financial help. Among the forms of financial help available to enable businesses to meet increasing capital requirements is a business credit card, which, fortunately, virtually all banks offer.

Business Credit Cards

Companies that opt to have the best business credit card can experience different advantages. These include:

Business credit cards that come from the best banks usually come with 0% introductory rate.  This means that no interest will be paid for a specific period of time, typically six months to a year. This perk will certainly make it easier for your business to complete payments.

By having and using the best business credit card, your operations can get additional value simply for using it. For every transaction accomplished with the card, you can accumulate rewards points that can be used later on by your business for different things, such as buying new equipment for free, providing incentives or rewards to employees (fine dining, shopping discounts, movie passes, etc.), and even rebates for spending on operational implements such as Internet service, office supplies, wireless communication service, and others.

With this particular type of credit card, your business will have an easier time organising and tracking expenses. If you’re growing your business, staying on top of your finances is crucial. By using a business credit card, you’ll have both billing statements and a detailed transaction history as data to work with when you evaluate and strategize your financial activities. The paper trail (electronic and hard copies) you have will also be a big help to your accountant, especially during tax season.

Lastly, the best business credit card will enable you to carry out transactions in different parts of the globe. This is a safer option than carrying cash and more convenient that issuing cheques. If, for example, you found a good supplier abroad while you’re travelling for business (or even for pleasure) and you want to buy some products immediately and have it shipped to your company.  You can rest assured that your credit card will allow you to carry out a transaction for your business in a hassle-free, safe, and effective manner since it will be recognised by the vendors you’re dealing with.

Learn more about applying for the best business credit card on this link.