Commercial credit demand improving, but small business owners continue to bear the brunt of difficult market conditions
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Supermarkets are scrambling to hire workers to keep up with the booming demand for groceries. Job postings have spiked in government, aged care, pharmaceuticals and health care. Product manufacturers are racing to help supply critical equipment needed during the coronavirus outbreak.
You want background credit information on a business prospect, so you turn to a commercial credit report. When the report doesn’t raise any red flags about the company, you decide to go ahead and start doing business with them.
The risk of loss is significant if your new customer doesn’t pay their bills, but at the end of the day, you figure the report would have warned you of anything untoward. But would it?
A clear picture of the future for credit markets is challenging in the short term. However, as lenders attempt to navigate through this period of enormous market uncertainty, Equifax aims to help provide some clarity on what trends are developing, what challenges are foreseeable, how lenders can assess the risks to portfolios and make changes to risk management controls.
There are steps organisations can take to help mitigate the damage and strengthen their response to this pandemic.
Here are six things to consider in managing this rapidly changing risk landscape.
The end of March is the time of year when AUSTRAC annual compliance reports are due in from reporting entities. Getting your report ready is not always a straightforward task, especially if your Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) program needs work.
In Australia, university students are often required to meet certain background screening requirements if they are doing a work placement in a public, private or community health setting. Students may also require checks for other placements, such as a working with children check for education placements.
Hiring new staff or purchasing inventory. Expanding your product line or ramping up your marketing. There are many different paths to small business growth. Figuring out which direction to take comes down to how well you plan. Building a vision of what you want to achieve and what success means to you will make it easier to get started. Here are six planning strategies that will help take your business to the next level.
Some of your customers might understand the importance of the PPSR, but others may be confused by it, or unaware of its existence. Where your customer sits on this sliding scale is more important to your business than you might think. We spoke to Cheryl O’Brien from Fletcher Building Limited to find out the benefits of educating customers about the PPSR and how to go about doing it.
Pre-employment screening is one of the best ways to ensure that candidates applying for positions in local government are suitable for the role and have their identity and credentials verified. In fact, the Australian Government often recommends that government agencies undertake background screening to Australian Standards during the recruitment process.
Statistics released by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC)1 shows that despite a drop in company insolvencies in December 2019, there were still 5% more insolvency appointments in Australia for the year ended December 2019.
In NSW, insolvency appointments were up 16% annually, and Victoria observed an annual increase of 12%1 . These increases were primarily driven from the construction sector, which experienced an annual increase of 18%2 of companies closing down (EXADs3).
