Swiss investment firm Crédit des Alpes is launching a new film financing division called The Film Bond, which offers an online tool that it claims reduces standard costs of completion bonds that most indie producers need to get their projects off the ground.
A completion bond is simply a guarantee that a film’s production will be completed on time and on budget. If a movie runs over schedule or over budget, the completion bonder pays to finish the film or makes the decision to abandon production and repays the investors who financed the project. Most independent films need a bond to go into production.
The new Crédit des Alpes Film Bond unit specializes in offering low-cost indie film financing through self-completion bonds that are connected to an online banking platform that comprises all key players involved in a movie from pre-production to post.
The Film Bond platform allows all partners on a film — producers, sales agents, distributors — to access a film’s financials from the start and monitor where things stand as production progresses. The platform can also be used to “make payments to all different parties,” said Ifé Adebajo, The Film Bond’s VP of U.K. and Europe who described the tool as “a one-of-a-kind central piece of technology.”
“The key concept is that we essentially act as a guarantor,” Adebajo added, noting that what The Film Bond offers is “not traditional completion bond insurance” that can reach costs of up to 13% of a film’s budget. Instead, The Film Bond charges 1% of a film’s budget and acts as a guarantor “in this kind of third space that makes us more like a partner” by offering “this really unique hybrid of financial knowledge and backing all in one entity,” she noted.
“The Film Bond offers new and innovative guarantor solutions to the global filmmaking industry, making the process simpler, quicker, more cost effective and more communal,” said Jonny Boston, who is The Film Bond’s VP of U.S. and the rest of the world outside of U.K. and Europe.
Crédit des Alpes, which is headed by Italian banker Fabrizio Cerina, claims they have roughly two dozen films that have boarded The Film Board, including “Bunny-Man,” an offbeat superhero movie being shot in Italy featuring a cameo by former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and produced by Andrea Iervolino through his TaTaTu shingle. A rep for The Film Board was in attendance at the just-wrapped European Film Market in Berlin to launch the new Crédit des Alpes film financing tool.
