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.
Latest
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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
Product
A new company can have an old risk history
A new company may have little financial history, but its directors can carry years of it — previous insolvencies, dissolved companies, connections to other active firms. Assessing a new company means examining the entity and the people behind it, and watching both after the account opens.
UK B2B Credit Digest
Nine hundred letters: the FCA turns to the lenders it doesn’t regulate
The FCA stepped up scrutiny of unregulated lenders the week FLA data showed non-banks writing 41% of members’ new finance.
Product
Companies House can verify a director. It cannot vouch for the company.
Companies House identity verification confirms who runs a company — it does not assess how the company pays, what it depends on, or how much credit it can support. What verification proves, what it can’t, and how to read filing signals during the transition.
Thoughts
The first creditor to lose patience isn’t in your ledger
A customer can pay suppliers on time while falling behind with HMRC. Tax arrears never appear in your ledger, and winding-up petitions arrive late in the deterioration. Where hidden tax pressure builds, what enforcement signals mean, and what to monitor before it becomes public.
Guides
How to build a good business credit score in the UK
A business credit score improves when the records behind it improve: file on time, pay within terms, keep disputes out of court and check your file. What actually moves a UK business score, how to build one from day one, and how to see what creditors see.
Product
The 5 best business credit report providers in the UK (2026)
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
News
Three votes to hike: the lending boom just got a higher price tag
Institutional capital committed $1.5bn to SME lending the same week the Bank signalled rates stay higher for longer.
Thoughts
You're not being paid late. You're being paid last.
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
260 companies entered administration. The risk was one group.
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.
News
Sixty days, no opting out: Westminster rewrites the terms of trade credit
Westminster will legislate 60-day payment terms and mandatory interest — the biggest rewrite of UK trade credit rules in a generation.
Thoughts
A ten-year loan is a ten-year blind spot
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
You’re not exposed to your customer. You’re exposed to whoever pays them.
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.