The Corporate Credit Mediator and the BeCeFi

In the course of 2008, turbulences on the financial markets have strongly affected the interbank market. A particular consequence of this has been a tightening of the banks’ refinancing conditions. As a result, the international financial crisis has taken root. The macro-economic indicators are confirming the degradation of the business climate in our country, in a general context of economic recession.

Financial institutions may well be less inclined to support creative projects or corporate development. The negative impact on the conditions of granting credit to companies is therefore fairly obvious: build-up of costs, requirement of important guaranties, even refusal of credit.

It is essential that these questions be monitored, because it is imperative to avoid a credit crisis for companies which, for lack of adequate financing, could no longer be the driving force that they should be in the development of the real economy. With, consequently, extremely detrimental effects on the socio-economic environment, and in particular on paid and self-employed jobs alike. The Knowledge Centre for Belgian SME Financing includes most of the players that are involved in these problems on its scientific Steering Committee. As a national reference centre on questions relating to SME financing, the BeCeFi has developed genuine expertise since its creation in 2005.

Beyond the Centre’s current missions, which consist of consolidating essential information, using it and disseminating it to authorities, entrepreneurs and their representatives and lenders, the supervising authority has entrusted the BeCeFi with a role of Corporate Credit Mediator. This measure is enshrined within the framework of the federal plan for SMEs and, more generally, within the Federal Government’s economic revival programme.

Concretely, it is, on the one hand, a question of creating a mediation service within the BeCeFi that is accessible to any company, company head, craftsman, shopkeeper, professional person or individual entrepreneur encountering difficulties with banks in solving his, her or its financing problems.

On the other, the Credit Mediator also handles requests from companies that are encountering difficulties relating to their credit insurance contracts.