Maybury Gate’s procurement process involved a supply chain spread across mainland Europe and beyond. Stone and slate from quarries in Italy and Spain respectively to timber frames and joinery products from Baltics. After the Brexit vote saw a sharp fall in the British Pound, Maybury sought the help of Claremont’s payment specialists to analyse their options to reduce the costs they were exposed to in Foreign Exchange and International Payments.

Maybury provided data on their previous international transactions, which had been processed by their company bank in the UK. They also provided details of their exposure to EUR for the next 12 months.

Claremont provided a complete review of their international payments and quickly established that Maybury were paying a 1.83% “margin” above the ‘interbank’ or ‘mid-market’ rate.

Solution

Claremont established a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated online currency platform with The Currency Cloud Limited (One of the networks regulated providers which Claremont uses for the Business Payment Solutions – BPS). This allowed Maybury to access the EURO’s required at a far superior rate to their local bank, saving them 0.77% per transaction.

Maybury had an invoice to fill of €155,000 for timber frame purchase and through using the Foreign Exchange account they saved €1193 on this single transaction.

Through the platform, supply chain payments were received across the continent within 2hrs to any EU bank account allowing goods to be released and days to be saved on crucial lead times.

The support team then implemented a risk management strategy using forward contracts (this is simply fixing a Foreign Exchange rate at a specific period of time. This can be a period ranging from 2 days up to 1 year)

Maybury could now control their costs for the next 12 months with absolute precision, allowing them to fix the prices with their suppliers and forecast their profits accordingly.