Businesses in Europe spend 74 days – or around 29 per cent of the working year – chasing late payments, according to new research.

The European Payment Report from credit management services firm Intrum, which surveyed over 10,500 B2B companies across 29 countries, found that on average each business spends €9,194 per year on chasing late payments.

The research found that the time spent chasing payments costs the European economy around €275 billion, which the report said exceeds the GDP of Finland.

In terms of industries, the financial services sector spends the most time chasing late payments, with around 45 per cent of businesses saying the spend 10 hours or more per week doing so. The hospitality and leisure sector spend the least amount of time, devoting just two hours per week to chasing late payments.

The report suggested that these figures reflected the need and resources industries had to spend on chasing late payments. Over 80 per cent of businesses in the financial services industry said that late payments are a problem for their business.

Over half of all firms surveyed for the research said they are finding it increasingly difficult to reach agreements with customers and suppliers on payments, which leads to longer negotiations and late payments.

Around 60 per cent of companies said that getting paid more quickly could help the stability of their business.

Andrés Rubio, president and chief executive of Intrum said that chasing late payments had become a priority for many companies.

He added: "Many businesses admit that resources currently spent chasing late payments could be redeployed for growth, investing in digital transformation and innovation, hiring and reskilling and geographical expansion, but in the short-term this simply isn't possible. The scourge of late payments means many firms are throwing good money after bad in an attempt to claim what is rightfully theirs.”

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