Reducing risk through blended credit profiles

Document: Published Oct 20, 2015

When attempting to determine a small business's credit risk, which is more useful, the company's credit history or its owner's? For decades, conventional wisdom has held that a business owner's personal credit history alone can be used to judge his or her company's creditworthiness. Many lenders have tended to see small businesses and small-business owners as one and the same, their funds so frequently commingled as to make the two entities virtually indistinguishable. However, this strategy is not always successful. A business owner with good personal credit still can have a failing company, and someone whose personal credit is messy still can own a successful business. Since a bad call can cost a creditor thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of dollars, Experian® decided to test the conventional wisdom for itself.

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