Thoughts
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.
Kirk Donohoe
Founder of Grand. Building business credit intelligence for the AI era.
Thoughts
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.
Thoughts
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.
News
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.
Thoughts
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
News
Credit keeps flowing, the risk keeps building
This week's UK B2B credit signal: credit supply is loosening while receivables risk is rising.
Thoughts
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
Thoughts
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
News
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
Thoughts
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
Thoughts
Low risk is not a lending limit
Every credit decision asks three questions. Most tools only answer one—and we keep letting them answer all three. Think about the account that went wrong. Not the one that failed a check — the one that sailed through it. The report came back low risk. Clean score, green light. You
Thoughts
The first creditor to know gets paid. The last one writes it off.
CCJs, winding-up petitions, director changes and late filings rarely arrive without warning. The question is whether you see them in time to act. Two builders’ merchants supply the same contractor on the same 60-day terms. Same invoices, same exposure. When the contractor goes under, one merchant has been