Wick Hill gives credit to fast-growing VARs

The Check Point and WatchGuard ally will spend the coming weeks reviewing its 1,400 resellers to identify those most in need of extra headroom. It currently has £4.5m of credit allocated to resellers.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill, said: “We are experiencing growth of roughly 35 per cent across our whole portfolio. The extra credit will be given to people who are working close to their limit and are growing at the same rate or at a faster rate than we are.”

Kilpatrick said despite the relative health of the security market, the security channel was in danger of being caught up in the credit crunch.

“This ensures our active partners are not at the beck and call of banks tightening credit on them,” he said.

David Ellis, director of e-security at rival Computerlinks, said: “The security market is more immune than other areas, such as desktop refresh, because end users still have to stay compliant with controls such as Sarbanes Oxley, no matter how well they are doing. Security resellers have not really seen the effect of the credit crunch.

“What Wick Hill is doing is no different to the rest of us. We will continue to pump in credit as long as the business is good.”

Robin Draper, financial director of rival Arc Technology, said: “The security market is seeing a lot of large orders from the public sector and anything we can do to keep business moving is useful.”