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2019 Innovation award – highly commended: FCIreverse

Luca Mattia Gelsomino

date: November 28, 2019

Entry of FCIreverse - Demica, a Highly Commended participant of the 2019 SCF Awards Innovation category.

Category: SCF Innovation

Highly Commended: FCIreverse – Demica

Demica has been highly commended in the SCF innovation category for its FCIreverse solution developed in collaboration with FCI that supports the more seamless on-boarding of suppliers in more than 90 countries.

FCI is global organisation for receivables financing and factoring companies. It wanted to offer members the ability to do cross-border supplier on-boarding, and selected Demica as its partner to develop such a solution.

FCIreverse aims to overcome the challenges associated with supplier onboarding across global supply chains. Banks which offer SCF often struggle to onboard their clients’ suppliers in overseas markets due to language issues, legal requirements and KYC.

FCIreverse offers a way of tackling these issues through allowing FCI members in different markets to undertake supplier onboarding for other members.

FCIreverse offers a traditional three-corner SCF model as well as a four-corner model which includes financial institutions in the buyers’ and suppliers’ markets. Revenues are then shared between the FCI members.

For example, a UK-based company with suppliers in Thailand could work with an FCI member in Thailand to onboard those suppliers. As an FCI member, you can on-board clients’ suppliers anywhere in the world.

Unlike in typical multi-funder SCF programmes, FCIreverse allow the buyer’s bank to retain their control over their multinational programmes rather than handing it over the platform provider.

The partnership model used by FCIreverse is more cost-effective than standalone supply chain finance and means funders can set up programmes in FCIreverse rather than using an in-house solution.

Banks using FCIreverse do not need to make large investments as the solution works as a plug-and-play platform with a simple standard integration model.

The lower costs entailed with this solution helps increase supplier participation rates. Often SCF programmes focus on the top 20 percent of buyer spend and do not include smaller suppliers or the more challenging regions. With FCIreverse, the lower cost of programme implementation means there is no barrier to on-boarding those smaller suppliers.

Luca Mattia Gelsomino

Assistant Professor at University of Groningen.

Luca Gelsomino is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen and the Academic Director of the SCF Community. In this role, he oversees the Community’s research projects, international network and publication strategy. His teaching interests include supply chain management, financial analysis and Supply Chain Finance. He holds a Ph.D. with merit from the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano (Italy), on the topic of measuring the financial performance of supply chains. While working for the School of Management, he directed the School’s permanent research program on Supply Chain Finance. His research focuses on the relationship between physical and financial supply chains.