A contained shock still sinks companies. Just not the average ones.

The summer outlooks agree: the shock is contained, but the gap between strong and vulnerable businesses is widening. Forecasts describe the average firm. Write-offs come from the tail. In a two-speed economy, the truth lives at account level.

The Late Payments Bill fixes the terms. It doesn’t fix the customer.

The Late Payments Bill proposes a 60-day cap on payment terms, statutory interest at 8% over base and real enforcement. Good law — with a side effect for credit teams: when lateness gets expensive, struggling customers pay you on time for longer, and the ledger stops warning you.

Identity comes before credit

Business identity fraud doesn’t beat the credit score — it chooses what the score sees. Why KYB and identity verification come before credit checks, and the three identity questions.

Your sales were flat. Your exposure wasn’t.

Credit exposure can grow while sales stay flat. The Two Books framework: why commercial dashboards hide the debtor book, and how merchants should monitor credit exposure.

Every trade account is a loan. Most just aren’t run like one.

Trade credit is unsecured business lending. Every supplier extending payment terms runs a loan book — here’s how to manage the debtor book like the lending portfolio it already is.

More capital to lend, less economy to lend into

The constraint on UK B2B credit just moved: capital is no longer the limit on lending — underwriting judgment is.

The check was never the decision

Approval feels like the decision. It’s actually the moment you know least about what happens next. Every credit process treats approval as the decision. You run the check, you approve or decline, you move on. But approval is the moment you know the customer best and your exposure to

Credit keeps flowing, the risk keeps building

This week's UK B2B credit signal: credit supply is loosening while receivables risk is rising.

Two companies, same sector, opposite risk — which one gets the tighter limit?

Two customers, same sector, same limit request. One is strengthening, one is weakening — and the sector view gives you one answer for both. Two customers sit in the same sector and ask for the same limit. One is strengthening. One is weakening. The sector view gives you the same answer

A reduced insurance limit is not an early warning

The email arrives on a Tuesday. Your trade-credit insurer has reduced the cover on one of your larger customers — a wholesaler you have shipped to for three years without a missed beat. Nothing has defaulted. There is no county court judgment, no news, no obvious reason. Just a number

Activity turns down while pricing turns back: the squeeze that the insolvency print still won’t show 🤷‍♂️

UK B2B credit and lending news digest, 21–27 June 2026 Summary UK private-sector activity tipped into contraction this week. The flash S&P Global UK Services PMI fell to 48.7 in June from 49.3 in May — a second straight month below 50 and the steepest

The reason moves before the credit score does

Two suppliers extend credit to the same building contractor. Same trade, same region, same credit score sitting quietly at the top of both their files. One of them shortens terms in early May and caps the exposure. The other keeps shipping on thirty-day terms until a winding-up petition