Bright Ideas You Should Be Aware Of…

Top 5 Business Credit Reporting Agencies

Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) – D&B is the primary business credit reporting agency. For years, D&B has offered a variety of ratings tools that can be used to determine whether to engage in business with a particular company and to determine loan terms. The most commonly used business credit score for vendors to determine a businesses’ credit worthiness is based off of D&B’s Paydex score.

Equifax – Equifax, one of the three primary consumer credit rating agencies, also provides business credit evaluations for over 22,000,000 small businesses and corporations. Equifax has developed its own business credit score known as the Small Business Credit Risk Score^TM. This evaluation is based on a combination of reported financial transactions, including banking, leases, trade accounts, public records, as well as the demographics of the business. The Financial Services Credit Risk Score^TM assigns a score from 101-992 with the highest score indicating the lowest risk of delinquency and the lowest score indicating the highest risk of delinquency. The Suppliers Credit Risk Score^TM assigns a score from 101-816 with the highest score indicating the lowest risk of delinquency and the lowest score indicating the highest risk of delinquency. These scores also include explanations of why a particular business earned that score based on a series of reason codes provided in the report.

Experian – Experian is another one of the three primary consumer credit rating agencies who provides business credit evaluations. Unlike D&B and Equifax, Experian’s SmartBusinessReports^TM doesn’t assign a business credit score. Given this information, it would be up to the lender to interpret the risk associated with this type of payment history.

Credit.net – Credit.net is a division of InfoUSA® that generates credit reports on approximately 15,000,000 businesses. There are 6,000,000 of the reports in their database that have been completed on small businesses with four employees or less. The credit analysis provided by Credit.net relies on four criteria: years in business, number of employees, public records, and stability within the industry. Its business credit score is a grading system from A through C (70-100) and is awarded as an evaluation of the company’s credit history.

Accurint^TMBusiness – This is a new business that is a combination of forces between The Better Business Bureau (BBB) and LexisNexis, one of the leading providers of business services and information. AccurintRBusiness is like Experian in that they provide public and business profile information, including credit history based on payment patterns of small, medium, and large companies. This company provides a payment history only with no type of unique business credit scoring system.