The ICF and Cecot sign a collaboration agreement to attract and channel financing needs and to carry out promotion and training campaigns. In the last three and a half years, the ICF has financed 352 companies and entities in Vallès Occidental for a total amount of 298 million euros.
A collaboration agreement between the financing office of Cecot and the ICF for the dissemination and prescription of ICF products through the figure of the financial promoter. This agreement between the Catalan Institute of Finance and Cecot was signed today by Vanessa Servera i Planas, CEO of the ICF and Xavier Panés Sancho, president of Cecot in an event at the headquarters of this entity in Terrassa.
The Cecot financing office, which offers a service of accompaniment, advice, information and access to financing for companies and the self-employed, will now add to its functions that of publicizing the ICF's financial products and channeling potential requests. Similarly, within the framework of collaboration between the ICF's network of financial promoters, the financing office will organise information and training activities for companies and the self-employed to disseminate the financing instruments of public promotion banks.
The CEO of the ICF, Vanessa Servera, stressed the importance of promoting transformative projects in the life of a company, which promote sustainable development and reindustrialization and innovation in the territory.
Servera underlined the ICF's commitment to financing business initiatives that contribute to these key areas for the local economy, explaining that "the entity complements the offer of the private sector by providing longer repayment periods according to the project. For a company to have the ICF within its group of banks is to have a travel companion also for when the situation goes awry," he said.
For his part, Xavier Panés, president of Cecot, explained that "despite the relationship between Cecot and the ICF goes back a long way, since 2003, the agreement we signed today beyond continuing to publicize and prescribe the various instruments that the Catalan Institute of Finance makes available to SMEs and the self-employed. now we will also go one step further as Financial Promoters through our Business Financing Office and we will help companies in the beginning of procedures. An operational step that provides great support to SMEs and freelancers in administrative procedures".
Panés stressed that, "in an environment of inflation and rising rates, SMEs need to optimise their resources, including financial resources, and this means, on the one hand, learning about new forms and solutions of financing and, on the other, operational support so that they can access them. The Catalan Institute of Finance, as a public bank, has solutions that often allow to increase the level of risk that an SME or self-employed person can bear and/or solutions with a subsidized financial cost – below that offered by classic banking. These solutions are not only not exclusive but are complementary and coexist well with classic commercial banking; so that a financial institution positively evaluates a mixed collaboration model (public-private) in the field of liabilities, for its client".
After the signing of the agreement, a Meeting for Sustainable Economic Growth took place that brought together about a hundred businessmen, entities and economic agents of the region and where it was announced that the ICF has financed, during the last three and a half years, 352 companies and entities in the Vallès Occidental for a total amount of 298 million euros. In this same period, 2,515 customers have been financed in the vegueria of Barcelona for a value of 1,300 million euros.
Business cases of Pastisart, Folgarolas Tèxtil, Vicente Torns and Since 1850
The meeting also included the celebration of a round table with companies that have received funding from the ICF that has served to share their experiences of growth and innovation. Núria Betriu, from Pastisart, Mireia Cazador, from Folgarolas Tèxtil, Vicenç Torns, from Vicente Torns SAU and Àlex Castany, from Since 1850, had a conversation with Antoni Vallès, commercial director of the ICF, who moderated the conversation.
About ICF
The ICF is the public promotion bank in Catalonia and, as such, its main mission is to promote the growth of companies and entities. Through loans and capital, it finances relevant and transformative projects, with special emphasis on the green transition, reindustrialization and social housing. The bank often acts as a complement to commercial banking, offering long repayment periods in order to facilitate debt repayment. Since 2014 it has been a member of the European Association of Public Banks (EAPB), which brings together a large number of banks and public financial institutions operating in Europe.
About Cecot
Cecot is a multisectoral business confederation, founded in 1978 and made up of a wide variety of guilds and business associations whom they represent before social partners. Its mission is to promote and ethically defend the interests of Catalan companies by offering an innovative and quality service in response to their present and future needs, in accordance with the social, natural and economic development of their environment. At the beginning of 2023, Cecot constitutes the Office of Financing, Aid and Subsidies, as a framework to centralize all the management of the services that the different departments of the entity already provided in guidance and accompaniment to companies, both in the processes of raising new funds, and in the optimization of the instruments or lines of financing that companies already have.