The increasing cost of interest-free finance (and what to do about it)

Last night's weekly client webinar included a question relating to the increasing cost of interest-free patient finance:

"Chris, now that Chrysalis have increased their IFF charge to 15%, what advice do you have?"

Another attendee mentioned that Tabeo were up at 13%.

(I haven't had a chance to verify these figures this morning - please check).

Co-incidentally, I've been in correspondence with Richard Scarborough at Medenta, who wrote last week to say:

"Hi Chris,

Happy New Year! I hope all is well.

Further to your recent blog re the potential for patient finance becoming a scarcity, you might have already clocked this… but if not, here is some relevant follow up content….

Humm (a BNPL / patient finance provider) entered the UK market about a year ago. They had firmly set their sights on the UK dental market based on the fact that they work with a large number of dental practices in Australia (I seem to recollect them claiming that it is circa 2000 practices). I’m sure that you will have clocked adverts and webinars on Dentistry.co.uk. …they have been pushing relatively hard.

However, after circa a year in the market they are now withdrawing from England, Scotland and Wales (See attached article that was on page 61 of the money section from this week’s Saturday times). You might also find the following link of interesthttps://www.altfi.com/article/10244_exclusive-australian-bnpl-humm-retreating-from-england-as-market-worsens). This will obviously impact those UK dental practices that have signed up with them in the meantime!

Needless to say…..Medenta are still supporting practices with providing patient finance through our partnership with V12 and as a broker we shall endeavour to always ensure that we have a lender in place to make our clients lives as easy as possible! 😊

If you want to chat about it, please feel free to give me a call.

Cheers,

Richard"

Richard Scarborough, Head of Medenta M: 07584 233117

I certainly do suggest that you check with your existing patient finance provider and/or speak with Richard and his team.

So what to do?

Options:

• Swallow the pill and witness a further reduction in your profit margins to simply get business over the line - yuk;

• Stop offering finance - yuk;

• Switch to interest-bearing finance, so that the charge is passed on to the patient - semi-yuk;

• Offer your own internal instalment plan - semi-yuk;

• Put your fee per item prices up (again) to reflect the increased costs of running your business - hooray.

PUT YOUR PRICES UP