GENERAL CREDIT FINANCE AND DEVELOPMENT LIMITED lends to businesses from Sheung Wan. We finance trade, stock and receivables, and we help exporters and importers get their file ready for a bank-issued documentary credit. What we do not do is sell instruments — nobody legitimate does.
The single most useful page in trade finance
Who we are
GENERAL CREDIT FINANCE AND DEVELOPMENT LIMITED is a business lender at Welland Building on Queen's Road Central. We are not a bank: we take no deposits, hold no accounts, and issue no bank instruments of any kind. We lend money to companies against things those companies own.
Sheung Wan has been a trading district for as long as Hong Kong has been a port, and the finance around trade has a specific and unglamorous shape. Goods must be paid for before a customer settles. Stock sits in a warehouse. An invoice sits with a buyer for sixty days. Somebody has to carry that gap, and for a small trading company it is usually the owner's own capital.
That is the work: lending against real assets, for a real transaction, repaid from the proceeds of that transaction. It is less exciting than what some firms advertise in this sector, and it has the advantage of being possible.
If a financing product cannot be explained in two sentences without the words "programme" or "platform", walk away from it.
Importers, exporters and trading companies
Companies and sole proprietors, never consumers
Effective rate and total repayable before you sign
Nothing to pay to make an enquiry or an application
Our lending
Every facility below is secured on an asset, a receivable or a confirmed order. That is the only kind of lending we do.
Advancing against invoices already issued to creditworthy buyers. Where the only problem is a sixty-day payment term, this addresses it directly.
Funding to fulfil a confirmed order that is larger than your working capital allows — repaid when the buyer settles.
Lending secured on stock you own and can identify, for traders whose capital sits in a warehouse rather than in a bank account.
Business borrowing secured by a charge over commercial or residential property. The property is at risk if the loan is not repaid — see the terms carefully.
Rent, wages and overheads through a stretch where outgoings run ahead of collections — with a defined term, not an open line.
Getting your documents, contracts and figures in order before you apply to a bank for a documentary credit. Advisory work — the bank issues, not us.
What we don't do
This section exists because businesses searching for trade finance encounter these proposals constantly, and because the terminology is designed to sound official. We offer none of the following, and we would advise you to leave any conversation in which they come up.
A bank guarantee is issued by a bank for its own customer, against that customer's credit and security. It is not an asset that can be rented out to a stranger. Anyone offering to "lease" you one is describing something that does not exist.
The promise is that an instrument you obtain will be converted into cash through a non-recourse loan. In practice the fee is collected first, the instrument never performs, and there is no counterparty to pursue afterwards.
Also sold as "trade platforms" or "high-yield programmes", supposedly available only to those introduced by an insider. Regulators in multiple jurisdictions have warned about these repeatedly. They are not real.
An advertised rate offered to any business in any country, regardless of security or circumstances, is a marketing device rather than a price. Real pricing depends on what is being financed and what secures it.
How it works
What is being bought or sold, on what terms, and who the counterparty is.
The goods, the invoice or the property that supports the facility.
Amount, effective rate, schedule, total repayable and any security required.
Funds released against the agreed security, with your copy of everything signed.
Client feedback
Someone had offered to arrange a leased bank guarantee for our project, for a fee paid in advance. I brought the paperwork here and was told bluntly that the product does not exist. That conversation saved us a very large sum.
We had a confirmed order we could not afford to fulfil, and sixty-day terms on the other side. Funding against the order and the invoice was unremarkable, which is exactly what I wanted. It worked and we repaid it.
They went through our contract and shipping documents before we applied to the bank for a credit, and pointed out three things that would have caused a discrepancy. The bank issued without a query. That is real help.
FAQ
Get in touch
What is being bought or sold, who the counterparty is, and what secures it. Come to us directly — there is nothing to pay to ask, and no intermediary should ever charge you to reach a lender.