Founder of Grand. Building business credit intelligence for the AI era.
A credit limit is a decision with a date on it. The customer underneath it keeps changing. Why limits set in 2024 are still shipping in 2026, which changes should trigger a review, and how to reprice exposure by event rather than calendar.
Credit has two vocabularies: the one in the contract and the one on the phone. This glossary covers both — the formal terms you'll meet in credit reports, loan documents and insolvency notices, and the language credit teams actually speak. Slang entries are marked (slang). UK usage throughout; where
Product
A new company may have little financial history, but its directors can carry years of it — previous insolvencies, dissolved companies, connections to other active firms. Assessing a new company means examining the entity and the people behind it, and watching both after the account opens.
UK B2B Credit Digest
The FCA stepped up scrutiny of unregulated lenders the week FLA data showed non-banks writing 41% of members’ new finance.
Product
Companies House identity verification confirms who runs a company — it does not assess how the company pays, what it depends on, or how much credit it can support. What verification proves, what it can’t, and how to read filing signals during the transition.
Thoughts
A customer can pay suppliers on time while falling behind with HMRC. Tax arrears never appear in your ledger, and winding-up petitions arrive late in the deterioration. Where hidden tax pressure builds, what enforcement signals mean, and what to monitor before it becomes public.
Guides
A business credit score improves when the records behind it improve: file on time, pay within terms, keep disputes out of court and check your file. What actually moves a UK business score, how to build one from day one, and how to see what creditors see.
Product
The UK’s main business credit report providers are Creditsafe, Experian, Equifax and Dun & Bradstreet, plus credit intelligence networks like Grand. The right choice comes down to five questions — including the two most buyers miss: what happens after the check, and can you ask the business itself
News
Institutional capital committed $1.5bn to SME lending the same week the Bank signalled rates stay higher for longer.
Thoughts
When cash tightens, businesses rarely stop paying everyone at once. They prioritise. A supplier's worsening payment times can mean it is moving down the customer's payment queue — and the time to notice is before the ranking gets tested.
Thoughts
Group credit risk is the exposure created by the companies connected to the legal entity you assess. A subsidiary can hold a clean file while depending on its group for cash. When the group fails, the entity-level view offers little warning.
News
Westminster will legislate 60-day payment terms and mandatory interest — the biggest rewrite of UK trade credit rules in a generation.