According to The Sunday Telegraph, a business development manager at Bibby Financial Services offered inducements to a finance broker based on introductions to businesses deemed likely to fail.

The publisher cited a letter from the Bibby employee to an unnamed broker, which was said to outline a formal, year-long arrangement, and propose sharing the fees asset-based lenders charge when their clients are placed into administration.

It read: "Should you successfully introduce us to a business which is to enter some form of insolvency we agree to make a payment to you of 20pc of the fee which Bibby obtains."

Sharing these termination fees is not illegal; however, Frances Coulson, a lawyer and former president of the insolvency trade body R3, told the Telegraph: "A termination fee is for breach of contract.

"If that 'breach' has already been envisaged by the provider before the deal begins, those fees should be legally challenged."

A Bibby spokesman said that the letter was "unauthorised" and added that the broker in question did not receive any commission "as suggested in the letter" and that the relationship had been ended.

"[The letter] does not and never has reflected [our] policy. This letter was an unauthorised, one-off letter written by an individual in direct contravention of our company policy."

However, the firm was said to have previously admitted that some of the proceeds of insolvency had been passed to brokers who gave them leads on struggling companies in "historical rare exceptions" that were the result of rogue staff members.

The Telegraph article, which can be viewed here, resulted from the publisher's investigation into the "unregulated" asset finance industry.