Since the financial crisis, lenders are less willing to take on credit risk, particularly of smaller business customers. However, as the CFO Magazine ebook entitled Gaining efficiencies and access: Finance and the credit lifecycle demonstrates, streamlining the credit-risk-management life cycle enables lenders to feel more confident extending credit to prospective small businesses, thus revitalizing our economy and business growth. In order to make wise decisions about credit extensions, senior finance executives need a blend of external and internal information to gain the best possible perspective on their risk: a forward-looking (rather than merely historical) perspective that takes potential upside opportunities into account (rather than focusing exclusively on possible downsides).

Over the past two to three years, online marketplace lending (OML) — also called alternative lending — has made dramatic changes in the landscape of small business lending. In this paper, the first in a series of eight articles, Experian experts discuss this exploding fin-tech-driven market from several angles. You can also read our blog post - How online marketplace lenders are changing the rules of small-business finance.

Discover five business intelligence reports that can help drive your strategies across the customer lifecycle.

Outstanding performance in the third quarter is a great headline focused on the resiliency of the American consumer. Business confidence and financials benefited from a consumer confidence boost as market conditions appeared to improve as inflation receded. Consumer spending remained elevated, supporting small business cashflow health, but a rising percentage of that consumer spend originated from leveraged consumer credit products. Creditors have been monitoring the rise in unsecured debt utilization and putting into action exposure limiting underwriting criteria.