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April 26, 2009

What Is a Credit Score That It Discriminates Based on Your Nationality?

If you're an ex-pat American running a profitable business in the UK don't be surprised that your nationality will affect your business’s credit score. To find out why continue reading this article.

First, let's answer the question what is a credit score and the credit ratings process.

A credit rating or credit score is a measure of the financial risk of a business to providers of finance and credit and the probability of the business defaulting on loan finance. Credit rating agencies take the following main factors into accounts to arrive at the credit rating or credit score for a business:

. The transactional history of the business
. The promptness of the business in meeting payments to suppliers, repaying loans and other financial obligations
. The structure of the company's debt: whether loans are secured (on business assets or assets of the owners of the business) or unsecured, the amount of debt the business is carrying and the repayment profile or history;
. Cash flow, working capital and the net worth of the business;
. The size of the business (number of employees, profit and loss plus balance sheet values including the background of the directors or owners of the business.

To calculate credit score ratings, a UK credit rating agency will enter the data, based on the above factors, into a credit scoring model to produce a credit score or rating.

Former Wall Street banker Alexander Kelly who heads Powerchex, a profitable employment screening start-up business in the UK, has accused Creditsafe UK, a credit rating agency, of unfairly penalising her young business by using her nationality in giving her business a lower than expected credit rating. Kelly claims that Creditsafe UK was unjustified as her business has being doing well in the downturn and it is rated highly by other business information suppliers.

Creditsafe UK told Alexander Kelly that neither she nor her fellow director was of UK origin and this was among the factors affecting her company's rating. Other factors mentioned were the small number of directors (Powerchex has two), that the company is not part of a group and that it is trading in an area with higher than average number of insolvencies among companies of similar size.

Kelly said: "I think this is discriminatory and disadvantages companies by using criteria that have nothing to do with financial performance or, viability of the company". Kelly also notes that the business is ranked in the top 20 per cent of companies by Dun & Bradstreet, the US based rating agency, and Creditsafe UK did not cut the ratings of her competitors that have worse balance sheets.

So, the crux of the matter is that credit rating agencies use different models in calculating credit scores and whether in recession or good times, it's important for a small business to protect its credit rating irrespective of the different models being used to calculate credit ratings. It's a good idea to get testimonials from providers of finance and suppliers to reinforce the credit worthiness and good management of your business.

David
Small Business Resource

Posted by David at April 26, 2009 5:02 PM

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