Computers play many roles in corporate credit business
These day’s computers are helping to make vital credit choices for all the main banks and lenders. The computers use complicated programs with tricky algorithms to score millions of small corporate credit transactions. These computers automatically reject transactions with low scores and let applicants know via computer-generated rejection forms. In order to survive in this computer intensive world, you need to be able to understand how credit scoring works. Here are some facts:
1. Credit scoring is a way to automate the evaluation of a business’ credit worthiness. Lenders use it to make loan decisions faster, cut their costs, adjust interest rates, terms, and other factors depending on your credit score.
2. Credit scoring also predicts what could happen, such as whether or not a person is likely to pay their debts. The programs use up to 20 specific factors to figure out a business’ worthiness for a loan.
3. A lot of creditors use credit scoring for company dealings less than $100,000. More than 90 percent of them use it on dealings less than $ 50,000.
4. Fair Isaac and Company, a credit score company, studied credit models during the 1980s. They figured out that the individual personal credit actions of a business’ main principals/owners was a solid interpreter of their corporate credit actions. If they paid their bills on time, they were likely to do the same in their business dealings.
5. The Fair Isaac scoring form gives industry credit scores from 50 to 350. Lenders consider a corporate credit score higher than 220 to be an acceptable risk. Scores below 175 are considered not acceptable.
6. The dominant factor in corporate credit scoring is your credit history for your company or that of the owners or principals. And, other items from the owners or principals are also used to get scores for business dealings.
7. Business-connected credit factors scored include: how long the business has been in operation, its size, what field it is in, how the company is organized, have they paid debts on time, its worth, bank account amounts, debt to income ration, and any bad things like bankruptcies or collections on old debt.
8. Many large lenders have come up with their own way of predicting corporate credit models. Some have made adjustments to the Fair Isaac model so it meets their needs specifically.
9. If your business gets turned down because of one of these scoring methods, ask the creditor to explain why. You may have a chance to be reconsidered.
10. Some creditors put businesses at high risk into special groups. They will charge them higher rates and give worse terms than those more credit worthy. Or they may ask for a guarantee or higher collateral.
11. You can improve your corporate credit scores by developing better credit habit and the profiles of yourself and your owners, pay all back taxes owed, pay off liens and judgments, pay debts when due, get rid of supply disputes, improve cash flow, register your credit history with Secretary of State in your area, attempt to improve credit scores over the next year, purchase things from stores that report your purchases to the credit agencies, and set up auto payments to pay bills.
Credit scoring isn’t a perfect system, but it does help figure out risks for lenders. Sometimes it does cause lenders to make choices that aren’t fair to the borrower due to the clients not having the characteristics listed in their models, so this can cause some businesses to be disapproved for loans. If this happens to your company, perhaps it should go instead with a lender that actually talks to borrowers and doesn’t use the models.
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