Italian Factoring and Confirming
Market Review
Italy’s factoring turnover reached €289bn in 2024 (≈13% of GDP), confirming its role as Europe’s 4th largest market and a key liquidity driver for businesses.
Overview
In 2024, the Italian factoring and confirming industry experienced a year of volume growth amongst monetary tightening. Total turnover approached €289 billion (+1% year-on-year), turnover – about 13% of national GDP, strong growth, but below its potential of approximately €378 billion if penetration matched Spain’s 17% share of GDP. Our funding gap report shows that Italian firms’ financing needs rose by around 12%, while the availability of bank loans fell by approximately 9%, widening the funding gap compared with our previous report (see our funding gap report). Despite the tighter credit environment prompting some firms to seek alternative financing the factoring sector demonstrated resilience relative to other short-term financing instruments, maintaining its high penetration in corporate funding throughout this period of tighter monetary conditions.
IItaly’s factoring turnover reached €289 billion in 2024. For benchmarking, Europe (EU + UK)’s total factoring and commercial finance turnover stood at around €2.05 trillion, and Spain’s combined factoring and confirming volume was €266.7 billion, representing 16.7% of its GDP. This highlights that Italy leads Spain in absolute market size, while Spain shows stronger relative product penetration versus GDP (see our Spain report here).
Factoring remains strategically important for Italy’s economy, providing essential liquidity support to companies. Factoring advances now account for over 40% of all short-term corporate loans to businesses in Italy1. This share has more than doubled over the past decade, over 2016-2024, Italy’s factoring turnover recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.1%, rising from €209bn to €289bn (≈1.4× growth). However, growth momentum has slowed in recent years, with 2024 turnover essentially flat (–0.3% YoY) compared with 2023.
Source: FCI and EUF Data, Assifact
Italy is firmly established as the fourth largest market in Europe (after France, Germany and the UK), highlighting its scale. Notably, the Italian market’s GDP relevance (around 13%) sits between higher penetration markets like Spain (around 17%) and lower penetration ones like Germany (around 9%), illustrating the country’s macro-financial links: This relative positioning is consistent with our Funding Gap Report, which highlights Italy as experiencing rising funding needs amid falling bank loan availability, thereby widening its funding gap. By contrast, Spain’s vulnerability has eased as both needs and availability declined, while Germany and France have shown more stable dynamics with funding needs and availability moving in closer alignment and without the sharp swings observed elsewhere. In Germany, this reflects the traditionally high liquidity of its corporate sector and stronger bank intermediation, which reduce reliance on factoring as a liquidity tool and help explain its relatively low penetration rate. France similarly benefits from balanced funding conditions, supporting a steadier trajectory in factoring volumes. These divergences help explain the differing levels of factoring penetration across markets.
Source: Assifact Report 2024
Activity Highlights
In 2024, the Italian factoring and confirming market demonstrated resilient expansion despite tighter financing conditions and slowing GDP growth.
Source: Assifact Report 2024
Growth was driven primarily by non-recourse (pro soluto) factoring, which reached €232.7 billion (+3.1% YoY) highlighting Italy’s preference for risk-transfer solutions. Recourse (pro solvendo) factoring marginally eased, highlighting the gradual structural shift away from risk retention models or generating the question whether Italian companies could be reaching their leverage capacity with financial institutions. Supply chain finance turnover, via reverse factoring or confirming programs, amounted to €28.0 billion (+0.9% YoY). Within this, confirming programs reached €4.2 billion (+6.2% YoY). This steady expansion reflects the growing institutionalisation of supply chain finance in Italy, particularly among large corporates seeking to optimise supplier payment terms while providing SMEs with reliable liquidity.
From a geographical perspective, the market remains overwhelmingly domestic, as the Italian economy holds a large amount of local investors approaching private debt via alternative asset managers and securitizations via regulated investment vehicles., with €215.8 billion in Italian receivables. International activity increased at a faster rate, though from a smaller base, rising 13.8% YoY to €72.8 billion, supported by EU trade integration and Italian exporters need for diversified funding lines.
At the end of 2024, outstanding exposures reached €70.07bn (+0.5% YoY). Asset quality remained resilient, with probability of defaults around 1.8%, insurance coverage extending up to 90% of receivables’ face value, A uniquely Italian feature is the large share of public sector receivables, over 30% of outstanding portfolios, which cements the market’s stability even amid a potential increase in defaults.
Summary of 2024 Activity:
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Total Turnover: €288.6bn (+1.0% YoY)
-Domestic Turnover: €215.8bn
-International Turnover: €72.8bn (+13.8%)
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Share of GDP: 13.16%
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Factoring Breakdown:
-Non-Recourse Factoring (Pro Soluto): €232.7bn (+3.1%)
-Recourse Factoring (Pro Solvendo): €55.8bn (-5.1%)
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Supply Chain Finance (SCF total): €28.0bn (+0.9%)
-Confirming (within SCF): €4.16bn (+6.2%)
Market Structure and Key Segments
The Italian factoring and confirming industry is characterised by a mature and diversified product mix, reflecting both corporate treasury priorities and the institutional depth of its providers. The market’s defining feature is its non-recourse factoring dominance, accounting for €232.7 billion, or 81% of turnover in 2024. This emphasises the preference of Italian corporates for risk-transfer solutions that remove receivables from balance sheets and stabilise working capital metrics.
In contrast, recourse factoring has steadily fallen to €55.8bn (19% of turnover), continuing its long-term decline as firms reduce tolerance for retained credit risk. This is relevant because recourse structures leave receivables, and their risk, on corporate balance sheets, limiting leverage optimisation. By shifting towards non-recourse factoring and insured solutions, companies can enhance leverage capacity with financial institutions while also generating incremental liquidity by selling invoices as financial assets.
Confirming has consolidated its role as the second growth engine of the market, with maturity factoring reaching €55.8 billion in 2024 (+8.8% YoY), strengthening its role within the product mix. This growth reflects a dual dynamic: large corporates leveraging confirming to extend and optimize payment terms, and SMEs securing predictable access to liquidity through accelerated supplier payments. Its continued expansion places Italy among the most advanced supply chain finance markets in Europe.
According to the Italian Association of Factoring, this segment provides scale and relative countercyclicality. Public sector receivables account for over 30% of outstanding exposures and have remained broadly stable YoY, even as private sector demand has softened, given that public sector demand often offsets cyclical corporate contraction. However, it also conditions the market’s performance on public payment discipline, creating a structural dependence that investors must account for in risk assessment and pricing.
Sectoral Exposure and Client Profile
The Italian factoring market demonstrates broad sectoral reach with clear areas of concentration. Manufacturing remains the largest segment, representing roughly one third of factoring turnover, well above its 15% share of national GDP, reflecting Italy’s export-oriented industrial base and the need to stabilise cash flows in complex supply chains. Wholesale and retail trade, together with transport and logistics, account for about one quarter of factoring volumes, broadly in line with their 20% GDP contribution, emphasising the role of confirming schemes in optimising supplier networks. By contrast, services account for only 20–25% of factoring, significantly underweight compared with their 50% share of GDP, highlighting factoring’s particular importance in bridging liquidity gaps in trade-intensive sectors rather than the wider services economy.
The client base reflects a dual composition:
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Large corporates dominate turnover, especially via confirming schemes, leveraging scale to extend payment terms and manage supplier networks.
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SMEs account for the majority of clients by number, increasingly using factoring as a substitute for constrained bank lending. Their adoption highlights factoring’s role as a financial inclusion tool, supporting liquidity across Italy’s fragmented business landscape.
This duality emphasizes factoring’s systemic importance, key for corporate treasure and a liquidity channel for SMEs.
ESG and Strategic Developments
Strategically, the Italian factoring market is evolving along three main dimensions.
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First, digitalisation is accelerating rapidly, with more than 40 specialised factoring players and banks investing heavily in platforms for automated onboarding, credit monitoring, and invoice processing; this is reinforced by EU-backed initiatives such as the Digital Europe Programme, which subsidizes technology adoption by SMEs.
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Second, integration with supply chain finance has deepened, with confirming volumes now accounting for over one-third of total turnover, enabling large corporates to extend liquidity across supplier networks while improving SMEs’ access to predictable cash flow.
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Finally, risk management discipline remains robust, despite higher interest rates, asset quality is stable, with probability of default around 1.8% and up to 90% of receivables insured. This resilience is supported by Italy’s high penetration of non-recourse factoring and by national programs aligned with the EU Taxonomy and Green Deal, which encourage sustainable credit practices and ESG-compliant receivables financing.
Taken together, ESG adoption and strategic innovation position the Italian factoring market not only as a liquidity tool, but also as a platform for sustainable and efficient corporate finance-aligning capital providers with Europe’s broader transition agenda.
Outlook and Strategic Importance
Looking ahead, Italy’s economic forecasts for 2025-2026 point to modest growth (1%–1.5% GDP expansion) amid easing inflation and interest rate pressures. Factoring and confirming demand are expected to edge higher, particularly in export-oriented and industrial districts, while the government’s intention to channel more financing into the defence sector may further expand receivables volumes. At the same time, the persistent funding gap highlighted in our biannual report continues to constrain SMEs’ access to traditional credit, reinforcing the role of factoring as a substitute for bank lending.
Resilient Demand. With lending standards still strict, both SMEs and large corporates are expected to expand factoring use to finance new orders and exports without overleveraging.
Competitive Advantage. Italian corporates view factoring as a competitive tool for extending payment terms and supporting growth. Liquidity solutions like factoring and confirming are now embedded in supply chain finance, and the market is increasingly attractive to private investors via securitisation vehicles, which can generate higher yields and mobilise private capital to narrow the funding gap.
Risk Outlook. The risk environment for Italian factoring remains favourable. Probability of default in the sector remains contained at around 1.8%, supported by extensive use of credit insurance covering up to 90% of receivables. Structural features such as the high share of public sector exposures (over 30% of portfolios) further mitigate systemic risk, providing a countercyclical cushion when private demand softens. Even as corporate insolvencies are projected to rise modestly in 2025, factors have demonstrated strong provisioning capacity and dynamic credit monitoring, allowing them to adjust exposures rapidly. This resilience positions the sector as a stabilising force: during downturns, factors often expand their role, absorbing credit risk when banks retrench, while in recovery phases they enable firms to scale quickly without balance sheet strain.
Non-recourse factoring dominates (81% of turnover), while strong insurance coverage and low defaults (1.8%) underscore the sector’s resilience and stabilizing role in Italy’s financial system.
Conclusion
2024 confirmed Italy’s status as the fourth largest factoring and confirming market in Europe, with turnover reaching approximately €289 billion (around 13% of GDP). Looking ahead, the sector’s potential lies in expanding digital platforms, ESG-linked products, and deeper supply chain finance integration, which could lift factoring’s penetration beyond its current 13% of GDP. Even in a challenging environment of monetary tightening, the sector delivered growth, highlighting its role as a key liquidity driver for businesses. By absorbing cash flows and improving payment delays, factoring and confirming have proven valuable to Italy’s financial stability and business continuity.
This resilience is underpinned by a mature market structure and disciplined risk management. The dominance of non-recourse factoring, now over 80% of turnover, allows companies to transfer credit risk off their balance sheets and has helped preserve asset quality even as conditions fluctuate. Meanwhile, confirming has become an integrated part of treasury strategy: large corporates leverage these programs to extend payment terms, while SMEs benefit from the reliable liquidity of accelerated supplier payments. Critically, providers have invested heavily in digital platforms and ESG screening, aligning receivables finance with modern efficiency standards and sustainability goals while maintaining strong credit discipline.
Looking to the future, Italy’s factoring and confirming industry is well positioned for continued steady expansion. As the economy entered 2025 with modest growth and gradually easing interest rates, demand for flexible working capital solutions should stay robust. Companies of all sizes are expected to rely more on factoring to support sales growth and extend competitive payment terms without straining balance sheets. When traditional bank lending tightens, factoring providers have a track record of stepping in to fill the gap, a trend likely to persist and further reinforce the industry’s countercyclical role. For investors and financial stakeholders, the Italian market offers an attractive combination of scale, resilience, and stability.
Ultimately, the Italian factoring and confirming market stands out as a backbone of the nation's financial system. Its sustained momentum and adaptability through economic cycles have confirmed its reputation as both a reliable partner for business and a resilient asset class for investors. Performance in 2024, alongside ongoing innovation, confirms that receivables finance will continue to support Italy’s economic competitiveness. This direction should bring confidence among all stakeholders as the market enters 2025 and beyond.