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
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.
Thoughts
A ten-year business loan is a decade-long bet that a borrower you understand today stays one you understand tomorrow. A guarantee behind it reduces part of the lender’s eventual loss but does not detect deterioration before default. Monitoring decides whether you find out in time to act.
Thoughts
Second-order credit exposure is the risk you carry through the businesses that pay your customer. A supplier can hold a clean, on-time account and depend on one developer or contractor for most of its cash. If that payer fails, the loss can travel down the chain to a creditor who never assessed it.
Thoughts
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.
Thoughts
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.
Thoughts
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.
Thoughts
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.
Thoughts
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.
Thoughts
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
Thoughts
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