Employees are lending their employers over £300 million through expenses every month

17 August 2018

According to new research from Conferma, 36 percent of employees in the UK use their own money to pay for work-related expenses at least once per month. The average individual expense claim is £72.20.

The research from Conferma, the fintech company specialising in virtual payment technology, shows that 1-in-3 have experienced cashflow issues due to slow expense reimbursement and 38 percent have been caused stress due to the time it takes to get their expenses repaid.

1009 UK adults currently in employment were surveyed for this research and according to the findings it is estimated that employees in the UK are effectively lending their employers £321 million a month through expenses, leading to a feeling they are at times acting as a bank to their own employer.

41 percent of employees admitted they would stop spending money on a business expense if they had to wait a significant amount of time to be repaid. Almost one quarter (19 percent) said they would stop undertaking business travel and a further 43 percent were prepared to halt meeting current or prospective customers and undertaking marketing activities altogether.

 

Commenting, Simon Barker, Co-Founder and CEO of Conferma, said:

“The scale of this issue identified in these findings has taken us by surprise. We knew it was a problem, and one we are working hard to address, but the impact of this on both employees but also employers really is cause for concern.

It simply should not be the case in today’s world that individuals, particularly the low-paid, are having to hold back personal spending due to the delay in expense repayment. Likewise, it is staggering that a single business opportunity should be missed due to an employee’s decision to hold off marketing because of these inefficiencies.

This is a problem that is understandable in 1988 but not 2018. Businesses must do more to address this issue for their own benefit as well as the wellbeing of their own staff.”