This month, Enterprise Account Executive Chelsea Starley, Coface joins the National Association of Credit Management to discuss the role business information plays in smart credit decisions. Learn more about what information is the most in-demand for credit managers in an excerpt from the conversation below.
We’re at a time of change and transformation for credit management. My job is to help understand what information credit and risk managers need – and how to get that to them in a way that helps them make smarter business decisions. One of the first things I do when speaking to a customer is ask, “What do you use for business information?” As it turns out, that is often a very loaded question.
Traditional products like credit reports are widely known and used within the credit and risk industries. They provide an important perspective on risk but, often, not the whole picture. For a company to develop a proactive risk management strategy, one that really nails their specific risk appetite and the balance of risk and reward they are willing to take for growth, they often need more information.
I frequently hear from customers the importance of financial statements and analysis, and how challenging it can be to locate this information on international and private companies. Pulling together everything you need may require a combination of public, private and even proprietary data sets.
If you have that, the next thing you might be interested in is economic risk. This is a hot ticket for many companies and really reflects the global business economy we operate in today. More and more businesses are using economic information like sector and country risk to build their own internal scorecards. At Coface, we have an entire economic team that publishes reports weekly – sometimes daily – on how global events, policies, politics and more are impacting trade and economic conditions. In addition to sharing this directly with our customers, we also take these same insights and build them into our economic models for up-to-date assessments on sectors and countries.
The final trend I’m seeing is the need for predictive data. Reactive data is helpful, but not when you are left holding the bag. Predictive information, specifically when it comes to default or bankruptcy, can be a game changer. Where previously some reports have focused on the likelihood of delinquency, I’m hearing more interest from customers on the value of predictive insights for insolvency.
Knowing what business information a company uses does more than highlight data gaps, it also shows what integration is needed. Credit and risk managers have a lot on their plate already, they need tools that help them do their jobs faster and with more accuracy. That means integrated solutions that increase risk visibility, whether through data or predictive abilities, and help them get to accurate risk assessments more efficiently than before.
Learn more from Chelsea about the state of business information and how companies are using new solutions to make smarter decisions in the Extra Credit podcast from the National Association of Credit Management.