ALF Becomes Founding Member and Vice-President of EUFactoring Association

The Portuguese Association of Leasing, Factoring and Renting (ALF) is one of the founding members and Vice-President of the EUFactoring Association, the new European association that will represent the factoring and commercial finance sector before the institutions of the European Union.

Established in Brussels, the EUFactoring Association currently brings together eight national factoring and commercial finance associations from Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Together, these associations represent around 80% of the European Union’s factoring market, based on year-end 2025 data. The new organisation aims to strengthen the sector’s representation at European level and contribute to a regulatory framework that reflects the specific characteristics of factoring and other receivables finance solutions.

ALF’s participation as a founding member and Vice-President strengthens Portugal’s role in shaping the European agenda for specialised finance and gives the Portuguese sector a direct voice in representing the interests of businesses that rely on factoring and commercial finance solutions. The new association’s priorities will include promoting a proportionate regulatory framework that is appropriate to the sector’s risk profile, particularly in areas such as restrictions on the assignment of receivables, capital requirements, and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules.

Factoring’s Growing Importance in Financing European Businesses

Factoring and other forms of receivables finance play an important role in helping businesses access liquidity, particularly SMEs, by enabling them to convert trade receivables into immediate financing. These solutions support cash flow management, business financial resilience, investment, and domestic and cross-border trade.

In the first half of 2026, the 151 factoring institutions represented by the eight national associations that make up the EUFactoring Association recorded a volume of purchased receivables exceeding €867 billion, equivalent to around 10% of the European Union’s GDP over the same period. In Germany, Italy and the Netherlands alone, more than 150,000 businesses use factoring.

For ALF, the creation of the new European association also represents an opportunity to strengthen recognition of factoring as a financing instrument for the real economy and to ensure that its specific characteristics are taken into account when European policies and regulations are developed.

“The creation of the EUFactoring Association is an important step towards giving the sector a more coordinated European voice, closer to the EU institutions. For ALF, becoming a founding member and Vice-President of this new association from the outset is both recognition and a responsibility: it means actively contributing to defining the sector’s priorities at European level and bringing the Portuguese market’s perspective to the debate. Factoring plays an essential role in business financing and cash flow management, strengthening companies’ financial stability and enabling them to invest and grow. It is therefore important that the European regulatory framework adequately reflects this reality,” says Vitor Graça, Secretary-General of ALF and Vice-President of the EUFactoring Association.

He adds: “Portuguese factoring accounted for €28.8 billion in purchased receivables in the first half of 2026, of which almost €3 billion related to Portuguese exports. This demonstrates the central role factoring plays in Portugal among the financing solutions available to businesses and the economy, making the implications of the European regulatory framework particularly significant.”

The EUFactoring Association intends to continue expanding its representation to include other national associations and international partners, consolidating a European platform dedicated to factoring, receivables finance and other forms of commercial finance.

The new association partially succeeds the activities previously carried out by the EU Federation for the Factoring and Commercial Finance Industry (EUF), which was dissolved in June 2026.