ScotPac and APositive forge alliance to drive growth for recruitment and labour hire businesses

Leading non-bank business lender ScotPac, and specialist payroll funding and backoffice solutions provider APositive, have struck an exclusive partnership to provide a suite of critical services to businesses in the $20 billion recruitment and labour hire sector across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

ScotPac has the largest and most flexible range of SME finance solutions of any non-bank business lender in the ANZ region, servicing around 8,000 clients, and achieving lending growth of more than 80% in the past two years.

APositive specialises in tailored payroll solutions for recruitment, labour hire and other contingent labour industries. It has processed more than 120,000 contractor timesheets, and leveraging its custom-built technology platform has funded over $3b for payroll for its hundreds of clients since 2013.

There are more than 10,000 recruitment and staffing businesses across the ANZ region that employ 350,000 people – or around 2.5% of the working population. The number of these businesses in Australia has continued to boom by an average of 3.8% a year since 2018, despite the impacts of COVID, inflation and interest rate rises.

The key features of the new partnership between ScotPac and APositive include:

• Scotpac will exclusively offer APositive’s market-leading payroll solution services to support its strong list of recruitment / labour hire clients.
• ScotPac’s Business Development Managers will promote APositive’s services throughout its extensive broker and introducers network.
• Via cross-promotion, recruitment and staffing clients of both businesses will have rapid access to best-in-class technology and expertise to help them finance and manage all of their payroll obligations.

Craig Michie, Group Executive, Client Acquisition at ScotPac, said the new partnership would provide cash flow certainty and peace of mind for more recruitment and staffing businesses.

“ScotPac has always enjoyed a great relationship with the recruitment and labour hire sector, and we intimately understand the critical roles that cash flow and payroll management play,” Michie said.

“By partnering exclusively with the market-leading payroll funding and backoffice solutions provider in APositive, we are giving our clients the best chance to grow and succeed, particularly those in the start-up phase when help is needed most.

“We look forward to leveraging the synergies across our two businesses to provide an unrivalled package of services for existing clients and new entrants in this thriving sector,” Michie said.

Danny Marlow, CEO of APositive, said the new partnership offered immense value to recruiters and labour hire business owners.

“Establishing and growing a recruitment or labour hire agency is a challenging endeavour, and finance and payroll management are two of the most complex yet vital ingredients,” Marlow said.

“APositive has been helping recruitment and labour hire businesses in Australia and New Zealand start, scale and succeed for more than 10 years.

“By joining forces with the region’s largest and most experienced non-bank lender in ScotPac, we are really excited about the prospect of giving more business owners the freedom to focus on new opportunities and grow their business,” Marlow said.