Thoughts
The money you have already earned that isn’t late
Retention is money you have earned that is withheld under the contract, so it never appears on an aged-debt report as overdue.
Kirk Donohoe
Founder of Grand. Building business credit intelligence for the AI era.
UK B2B Credit Digest
Growth went direct: asset finance rose 15% and broker-introduced business grew 2%
Asset finance grew 15% in June, but direct finance rose 28% while broker-introduced grew 2%.
Guides
How to credit check a company — and what the check won't tell you
Learn how to credit check a UK company, read its score and warning signs, and decide how much weight to place on the result.
Thoughts
The credit box got wider. The monitoring job changed.
Widening acceptance criteria isn't only an underwriting decision — it creates a monitoring obligation for the life of the loan.
Thoughts
A company that doesn't fail is not a company that pays
Falling insolvencies don't mean suppliers are being paid more reliably — here is what financial stress looks like before a company fails.
Thoughts
An instant answer still has a date on it.
Speed of delivery and age of evidence are different things, and every AI credit answer has three dates behind it.
UK B2B Credit Digest
Bought, not broken: a motor-finance bill is redrawing who owns SME credit
A motor-finance bill put an SME bank on the block while merchant volumes fell 5.8%.
Thoughts
Only some suppliers got the letter.
A trade credit insurer reduced cover on a major housebuilder. Only the suppliers holding cover on that name were told.
UK B2B Credit Digest
The insurer moved first: a cover cut travelled faster than any credit check
The week's sharpest risk signal about a trade counterparty came from a letter from an insurer, not a change in a credit file.
Thoughts
The business carried on. The debt didn’t.
The name, the staff and the sites can carry on trading while your invoice sits against a company that no longer trades.
The limit you set in 2024 is still shipping in 2026
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.
The credit glossary: the formal terms and the slang
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