Last week Thursday and Friday, 120 attendees gathered in Belgrade, Serbia, for the annual Regional Conference on Factoring in CEE and SEE. The conference room was full house and attendees could listen to presentations and lively panels discussions. As reported by some attendees “the FCI conference was really interesting, a great success!”The first day, diverse presentations on the state of the market in CEE and SEE were presented as well as in Serbia in particular. It was followed by a panel discussion on the factoring in CEE and SEE where the panellists reported different opinions depending on their own market. The need to educate the legislators was highlighted (but are they willing to be educated? was the question). Some of them in the region were present and showed their interest to understand better the factoring and receivables finance industry.The day ended with presentation on technology from some of the gold sponsors. Are we heading to a fully technology based industry? Is it technically possible? What are the risks? What is the value and security of tokens?The attendees gathered for a Serbian networking dinner at the end of the day.The second day started with a presentation on mechanics of factoring. The presentation was aimed to educate the new persons in the industry (and regulators). A panel discussion on compliance and how to avoid big losses in the region. The panellists demonstrated that compliance is not only a nice to have but a must in factoring. The employees of the factoring industry need to be trained on compliance to protect against internal fraud but also set limits. Don’t ignore your employee intuition highlighted one of the panellist!The relation of hate and love between credit insurance and factoring companies was afterwards discussed by a panel. How can we best cooperate with credit insurance?The newly developed business line, FCIreverse was afterwards presented showing the customer journey of reverse factoring and highlighting why FCIreverse is for everyone but also commenting on the recent challenging articles on reverse factoring. The FCIreverse Forum in Madrid on 17-18 October will elaborate more on the subject.Finally but not least, panellists discussed how to further develop the two-factor model in CEE and SEE region. Taking the experience of some experienced user from developed market, the panellists interacted on what are the difficulties to develop it in their own market. For example the recent economic slowdown in Croatia didn’t help to develop the business there, while other independent companies encounter issues with corresponding banks.During the entire event, we could feel the willingness to network with other attendees, lively discussions took place during every break moment and finished during the networking lunch.Attendees returned home with many new ideas and hopefully some additional potential new correspondent for cross border factoring.