Fall is in the air, and ‘tis the season for tricks, treats and things that go bump in the night. Businesses provide a great disguise for fraudsters because it’s relatively easy to create shell businesses or to take over the identity of a dormant corporation. Consumer authentication tools (which have historically been more sophisticated than [...]

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Some good friends of mine are on a new “low carb” diet and have been getting really impressive results. Now I find myself constantly checking food to make sure I don’t get too many of the dreaded “net carbs.” Too many, and my waistline will suffer. Similarly,  not knowing what’s in the background of a [...]

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I have especially fond memories at this time of year of working with my grandfather as a painting apprentice during my summer vacations growing up. One of my jobs as an apprentice was using a putty knife to scrape the cracked old paint off of window sills and then sanding and priming them before applying [...]

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I usually like to schedule my annual physical around my birthday. It’s a natural reminder to visit my physician to identify any potential issues or suggestions of how I can improve my health. Like an annual physical, benchmarking your portfolio on a regular basis is a great way to identify both risks and opportunities for [...]

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Striking a healthy balance between risk management and customer service can be a challenging proposition, especially when dealing with small business accounts. This was a common theme voiced at today’s TRMA Summer Conference Small Business Roundtable here in rainy San Francisco. Small business accounts represent significantly higher exposure than consumer accounts, so it’s understandable that [...]

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Small businesses are big business, and unfortunately, they can represent big risk too. According to research conducted by Greenwich Associates, the percentage of small businesses applying for a loan increased from 5% in the third quarter of 2010 to 15% in the fourth quarter of 2010 and skyrocketed to 29% in the first quarter of [...]

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Many small business lenders seem anxious to increase their lending activity, but are wary of lingering economic risks, and for good reason. According to Experian’s BizSource database, as of March 2011 about 58 percent of delinquent small business accounts were likely to go 91+ days delinquent. By comparison, only about 18 percent of larger business [...]

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Reporting your commercial accounts receivable experiences to commercial bureaus is not a new idea, but “give to get” consortiums that provide access to exclusive content are increasing in popularity as one way to get a competitive edge in today’s challenging market conditions.  These credit “co-ops” provide access to premium risk tools such as highly predictive [...]

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