Case study: “Moneycorp supported our international growth”

Many businesses find the secret to successful international operations is being efficient with their currency costs. Using the services of a foreign exchange specialist such as Moneycorp, the providers of City AM International Payments, can be integral to growth whether a business is importing, exporting or expanding overseas. The specialist services can save a business thousands with expert guidance and bespoke contracts to protect against adverse foreign exchange market movements.

 

Moneycorp’s long-standing client Mountain Warehouse has been steadily growing since 1997 to become the largest outdoor clothing and equipment retailer in the UK. They aim to sell quality products at low prices, providing great value outdoor gear sold with honest advice from knowledgeable staff. In the past few years they have seen solid growth to become a multinational company.

 

Marcus Ward, Mountain Warehouse's Finance Director, explains how Moneycorp has supported them as the business grew.

 

"Mountain Warehouse first came to Moneycorp in 2008 to take over providing for our foreign exchange needs when the Icelandic bank we had been using folded in the recession. After speaking with their highly professional dealing team we opened an account and have been trading with Moneycorp for almost 6 years now alongside our international clearing bank.

 

"We always talk with our dealer before making any trades, as we've found them to be very good at listening to what we need and offering appropriate guidance on the market movements or specialist contracts we should use. In conjunction with this we find Moneycorp's online portal very useful to manage our various international payments.

 

"We largely have a dollar requirement to buy products from our overseas suppliers, but we also have landlords to pay around the world. We typically use forward contracts to buy our dollars as we find locking an exchange rate beneficial to protect our international payments from adverse market rate movements, importantly this means we don't have to worry about exchange rates shifts hitting our margins.

 

"Though, we do use spot contracts for ad-hoc international payments, and as a business with an international presence it can be crucial for us to be able to make these efficiently, we've been consistently confident that Moneycorp will deliver this. It's always a fast process using Moneycorp; decisions can be made quickly and our needs have always been met.

 

"Our business has grown considerably since we started using Moneycorp, and we've enjoyed seeing the support of Moneycorp grow with us. In 2009 our turnover was around the £30m mark, but we've seen this grow to over £100m by 2014. Our retail presence has increased in number from 35 stores to 190, with 15 of these overseas – so we have been maturing steadily into a multinational company. As we grew, so too did our currency needs and Moneycorp managed to consistently deliver a competitive service to us as our requirements grew."