Britain’s creative economy contributes £124.6bn GVA and is projected to generate £45bn in advertising revenues by the end of 2025. Yet instability persists, £26bn is owed in late payments across SMEs, with a £1.1bn backlog across agencies, studios and freelancers. Even award-winning campaigns often go unpaid or are settled late, leaving firms to bankroll client work.
Jacob Casson, CEO of Monet, a finance platform for the creative industries, believes that agencies must move beyond pricing outputs (assets, posts, edits) and instead quantify the real value of inputs and outcomes – strategy, ideation, senior time, and results – if the sector is to remain sustainable.
Monet recently secured a £17m early-stage funding commitment, led by fintech heavyweights including Paul Rippon (Monzo, Starling), Michael Fischer (Modern Capital Group) and Dan Adler (Railsr), alongside Force Over Mass and other leading investors.
New Digital Age spoke to Casson to find out more…
Tell me about Monet and how you came to be CEO of the business?
I started Monet because I had the same problem that so many agencies face. On paper, my business was profitable, but in reality we never seemed to have any money. I was constantly borrowing from my parents just to keep things afloat, even while billing some of the world’s biggest companies every single month.
The banks didn’t understand the business model. They’d say, ‘Your company isn’t four years old’ or ‘You don’t fit our criteria,’ when I was literally showing them invoices from household-name clients. That frustration, and the lack of any solution out there, is what pushed me to build a platform that solves the problem I couldn’t.
How are late payments and shrinking margins undermining agency growth in the UK?
Right now, the typical SME is chasing about £17,000 worth of invoices. In the creative sector, it adds up to around £1.1 billion a year tied up in late payments. It’s staggering. I’ve seen agencies with £10 million in annual revenue waiting on £800,000 to £900,000 in overdue payments, often already 30 days past due.
When you consider that most agencies are paying 80% of their revenue straight back out to talent, it’s a nightmare scenario. You’re waiting months for cash from your biggest clients, but your bills don’t wait. That gap creates huge stress and is exactly why our model makes so much sense to agencies.
A lot of our customers are people who started out as two cameramen shooting small projects and now employ 60 people, running campaigns for the world’s biggest brands. They’re brilliant business people and creatives, but unlike the big corporate agencies, they don’t have JP Morgan on speed dial. That becomes a real problem when clients impose ridiculous payment terms.
I saw one major campaign where the terms were essentially a year before the agency would see cash. A WPP or Publicis can absorb that. A mid-sized independent can’t. That’s the glass ceiling. We exist to help those agencies grow beyond it without being strangled by cash flow.
How does Monet help agencies with this issue?
We’ve built Monet so that we don’t impact agency–client relationships. We just let agencies get on with running their business. A campaign gets contracted, the agency uploads the details to us, and once the client signs off a piece of work, we release funding straight away. That means agencies can pay freelancers and suppliers tomorrow instead of in 30, 60, or even 90 days. That’s really important when 64% of freelancers say late payments have affected their ability to cover living essentials. There’s a clear human impact to this.
Because we’re a financing company, our clients can even pass those payments directly to their talent in over 130 countries and 78 currencies. For what is usually just one or two percent of the total fee, people get certainty and peace of mind. If you’ve ever been a freelancer trying to pay your rent while waiting three months for a client, you know that’s an option you’d take every time.
The UK’s agency sector looks fantastic from the outside, but under the surface it can be fragile. We’re in a period where cash is harder to come by, banks are lending less, and clients are pushing out payment terms. That’s why financial resilience is absolutely key.
What steps can agencies take to safeguard themselves from unpaid invoices/bad debts?
People sometimes think big brands are just bad payers, but it’s not that simple. It’s structural. No business wants to part with cash until they absolutely have to. Corporates hold onto money because they can. They wait for ROI, or they put it in money market accounts, and in the meantime their suppliers wait 120 or 150 days to get paid. It’s free financing for them. That’s never going to change.
So agencies have to protect themselves. Push for partial payments upfront. Get better at reading and negotiating contracts. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen clawbacks tied to performance metrics that the agency has no control over. And use tools to stay on top of invoicing and cash flow. Because the truth is, in this business cash is king, and there is no one coming to save you. Not VCs, not private equity, not the banks. Until you’re doing £50 million-plus, you’re on your own.
The greatest businesses in any industry are the ones that know where every penny is going and make sure they’re not overly leveraged when times get tough. What we do is help agencies get into that position, equipped with financing, payments, and tools that make them stronger. Over the next five years, that’s how agencies will move from being just good businesses to becoming great ones.
What does success look like for Monet over the next 2 to 3 years?
The last two years have been about proving that what we’re building works. We’ve financed millions in campaigns for clients ranging from Netflix to Universal Music, and we’ve seen first-hand how powerful it is for agencies.
The next step is to evolve into something bigger, essentially an operating system for agencies. Not just financing, but also business banking, payments, invoice chasing, margin tracking…all the unglamorous but critical things that keep the lights on.
Right now, we serve agencies billing the big global brands. But the goal is to support the whole ecosystem, including PR shops, production houses, creative agencies, influencer outfits. If we can make those companies more financially resilient, then we’ve done our job.
