Additional attention for your financial situation and credit
Experiencing challenges as an entrepreneur can impact your business's financial wellbeing. If this happens, we might transfer your credit to our Financial Restructuring and Recovery (FR&R) team for support.
Good to know about FR&R
What is FR&R?
The Financial Restructuring and Recovery (FR&R) team handles credit with higher risk. Often, this involves businesses facing challenging financial times. Your business's financial health and future prospects are crucial. This ensures you can meet all financial commitments promptly.
Why is FR&R dealing with your credit?
There are various reasons why the Financial Restructuring and Recovery (FR&R) team might need to assist your business. You might struggle to repay loans or pay interest on time, or you could have surpassed your overdraft limit, putting your account in excess. Your business's financial health or outlook might be concerning, such as facing losses, having low equity, or experiencing market changes. We evaluate each situation individually. We’ll explain why we think FR&R’s support is important for your business.
What does FR&R do?
The Financial Restructuring and Recovery (FR&R) team gives extra focus to your financial circumstances and the credit you've received from us. We also explore ways to lower the risk of not meeting your commitments.
How the supervision process works
In a short video (02:14), we guide you through the steps of the supervision process, what it entails exactly, and how the Financial Restructuring and Recovery (FR&R) team can assist you.
Steps of the supervision process
Introductory meeting
Your contact person at FR&R will invite you for a meeting. This meeting may take place in person or over the phone, or it may take the form of an online video meeting. The following topics will be discussed in any event during the meeting:
- Your business's organisation, market position and strategy
- Your business’s financial information
- Your credit, rates and security
- The reasons why the bank is concerned
- Agreements relating to the FR&R supervision process
- Any additional supervision and/or assistance provided by external experts
It is vital that you provide as much relevant information as possible about these topics. If you have advisers and/or an auditor, they are also welcome to attend the meeting.
Following this meeting, your contact person at FR&R will send you a report of the meeting that includes a list of the agreements made. Your contact person will ask you to send us certain documents and financial information.
Action plan
You draw up an action plan in which you state what you intend to do to improve the financial situation of your business. Your adviser or auditor can help you with this. The action plan sets out the improvements you will make and explains how you will make them. It is also essential that you can implement the action plan immediately.
We will assess the plan from our perspective as the lender. It is important that we believe the plan is feasible and can bring about a sufficient improvement in the financial situation of your business. An effective action plan forms the foundation for the supervision process.
If you are unable to draw up an action plan that will bring about a sufficient improvement in the financial situation of your business, this may lead to the early termination of the supervision process and your credit.
Your contact person will discuss with you the further measures we consider necessary to reduce the credit risk. These may be measures to be taken by you at your business or additional agreements that relate to your credit, such as providing additional security or bringing in an external adviser.
Implementing the action plan and agreed measures
You will implement the action plan in consultation with your contact person at FR&R. You will regularly discuss the progress you have made in implementing your action plan, as well as your financial situation, possible solutions and the follow-up steps that are required. You will keep your contact person informed about the progress you have made in implementing your plan and the results you have achieved. During this phase, you will also send us all information that we request. If the circumstances change, you might need to adjust the action plan in consultation with us or amend agreements that had previously been made.
Should you be unable to implement the agreements relating to the action plan, we may end the supervision process and terminate your credit.
End of supervision process
There are several possible ways in which the FR&R supervision process can end:
a) Additional attention from FR&R is no longer necessary
If in the opinion of FR&R, the risk associated with your credit has decreased and it is no longer necessary for FR&R to deal with your credit, the FR&R supervision process will end. We will, of course, notify you about this. In this context, FR&R will check that the following apply:
- You have proven that you are able to fulfil all your obligations on time
- Your business has positive financial results and a positive outlook, and so you will continue to be able to fulfil all your obligations on time in future
- You and your business are complying with all the agreements made with the bank
b) We terminate your credit
We may decide to do this if:
- The financial situation of your business does not improve to a sufficient extent and the decrease in the risk posed by your credit is insufficient (or we expect it will be insufficient).
- You fail to comply with the agreements set out in the credit agreement
In that case, the Recovery team at FR&R, or our external collection partner, will take over responsibility for dealing with your credit and a recovery process will be started.
c) You repay your credit in full
You may also repay your credit in full by, for instance, refinancing it with another lender. Once you have repaid the credit, the FR&R supervision process will also come to an end.
