credit information

Who are you doing business with? Do you actually know? You might immediately think, "yes, of course! But do you always dare to say so honestly? Especially with new customers or when something changes with existing customers, it is good to take a critical look at their creditworthiness. 

Sound business management starts with knowing who you are doing business with. Especially when you deliver on credit, it is crucial to know whether a buyer is able to pay. But credit information goes beyond payment behaviour. Understanding shareholders, directors, a company's lifespan, incidents and growth trajectories is just as important.

The process of debtor management actually starts before you enter into an agreement with a customer. We will assume for a moment that that process is running, you have the right people in the right place to make sure everything is done to perfection. But of course, there are always ways to optimise.

Do you know who you are doing business with? You might now immediately think "yes, of course I know!", but we dare to doubt that. Sure, you have existing customers with whom you may have been doing business for years. With no hard feelings. They always pay on time and you trust it to stay that way. Those customers are what we wish for everyone! But what if things go haywire? Or if you take on new customers? How do you find out if they are creditworthy? Whether risks need to be covered? Prevention is always better than cure.

There comes a point when, as a business owner, you know you 'have to' do something with insuring credit. At least if you sell to other businesses and deliver on credit. You just want to make sure that late payments (or worse, non-payments) affect the health of your business. Because that's something to lie awake at night worrying about. After all, you just have to pay your suppliers too. And so much more...

Borrow money quickly without the intervention of a bank. A direct loan from a lender to a business, that is Direct Lending. With banks becoming increasingly reluctant to lend money, the bank less interested in certain segments and procedures becoming more bureaucratic, Direct Lending can be a serious alternative.

You probably recognise it? The deal is done, the champagne is opened and everyone shares in the revelry. But how do you prevent this joy from turning into a hangover? More than half of bankruptcies are caused by poor debtor management. In this article, we discuss the steps of efficient debtor management. In particular, we elaborate on the first step, checking the creditworthiness of your buyers.

A well-known A-brand multinational in the retail & fashion industry, with a turnover of more than a €1.5 billion, recently enlisted Xolv's help. They asked us to advise and support them on a number of pressing challenges. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the pressure on the Accounts Receivables department at this group, like many of its peers, increased enormously. This was due to the many requests from debtors for deferred payments, (late) payments, collections and damages due to bankruptcies of their debtors. Xolv reviewed the creditworthiness of this company's buyers and looked at what options they had to cover the financial risks with credit insurance. In this client story, you can read how we tackled this challenge.

Taking risks is part of being an entrepreneur. To make an informed choice about which risks you will or will not accept, up-to-date business information is important. What is the financial situation of your (future) customer or supplier? What is its creditworthiness like? Last year went well according to the public financial statements, but what does that say about the future? In this article, we discuss the importance of having up-to-date data for assessing the risks of your customers or suppliers.

Whether the fraud is committed inside or outside your company, financial losses usually have a major impact on your business. You will probably have to incur costs to mitigate further losses, such as the costs of legal proceedings. With fraud insurance, you protect yourself against financial losses and costs. In this article, you will read about the benefits of fraud insurance at Euler Hermes and we answer frequently asked questions about taking out fraud insurance.