Swiss invoice finance platform Advanon has to deal with a large fraud case. A client allegedly made up invoices for non-existing transactions and submitted forged invoices, bank records and emails. These invoices were then financed on the Advanon platform by 78 private investors. The fraud continued undiscovered for about a year racking up a total damage of 2.4 million CHF (approx 2.1M EUR).

2.4M CHF may not sound a very large absolute sum for a p2p lending company, but Advanon so far had financed invoices of only about 60M CHF in 2017, so the potential loss equals roughly 4% of the total yearly volume. And the exposure per investor is unusually high for a p2p lending marketplace as the affected investors could face a 30K CHF loss on average. Media speculation is that they might face a total loss. Advanon has about 3,000 registered investors, the majority from Switzerland with a few German investors. Advanon offers interest rates between 6-20%.

“We founded Advanon with the mission to help SMEs meet the ever-increasing payment deadlines and thus have a positive impact on the SME economy and its growth. It is frustrating and intolerable that this was being exploited by fraudsters with great criminal energy. We are mobilising all our efforts to fight for our investors and to recover the money they have invested.” Several lawyers and the entire management are working on the case. “We will adjust our strategic direction,” said Advanon CEO Lojacono. As a consequence, only institutional investors will soon be admitted to the platform. Advanon has always emphasized that investing in a high-risk asset class like factoring should only be considered as part of a diversified portfolio.

The case is now investigated by the public prosecution body.

Last November Advanon announced a pilot project for an invoice financing cooperation with insurance company AXA Wintherthur.