Channel Register

Ingram ups small biz credit

Money meets mouth

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Channel, 10th March 2009 12:18 GMT

Ingram Micro's Europe arm is offering more credit to its small business customers - even offering to move pre-payment customers onto credit accounts.

The distie said the economic crisis was making it difficult for small business to get credit from banks or from disties. Therefore Ingram is moving "a significant proportion" of its pre-pay punters onto credit accounts.

The company reckons small and medium resellers make up about a third of Europe's IT distribution but are struggling to get credit from suspicious banks.

Johannes Kamleitner, Ingram's Emea manager for SMB marketing, said: “Country by country we are now screening our pre-payment customers who are in scope for additional credit. If our analysis confirms they meet our criteria, then we move them away from pre-payment and make credit lines available to them."

In other news, credit insurer Euler Hermes is again cutting its exposure to giant UK High Street reseller DSGi. Euler halved DSGi's insurance cover in January and made further cuts last week, CRN reports.

Dixons said the move would have no impact on its overall terms with its suppliers. ®