credit information

Geopolitical tensions, faltering supply chains and economic unpredictability dominate the news. This global turmoil directly affects your wallet, especially via rising or sharply fluctuating short-term interest rates. While you focus on your core business, the current interest rate market can imperceptibly take a big bite out of your profit margin. Consequently, many business owners wonder whether they should lock in their variable interest rates now or ride out the storm. The surprising answer is that it is not about that one rate; the real problem, as well as the solution, lies deeper.

As an entrepreneur, you are constantly thinking about the future of your business. With financing growth, perhaps an acquisition or optimising your working capital. Either way, appropriate financing is important. Whereas the house banker used to be the logical and often the only point of contact, the financing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.

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.