D&B is by far the largest business credit reporting agency. You will want to get a Dun & Bradstreet number (DUNS) for your company. This is a unique nine-digit identification number. It allows you to register your organization with various commercial groups and is equivalent to a status number. If your business will be providing products or services to the government, or will be applying for grant money, you will need to have a DUNS.
The company operates the largest business database in the world, with information on over a hundred million businesses worldwide. This includes thirty-eight million in the United States. Dun & Bradstreet is far and away the number one provider of business information concerning marketing, credit and purchasing decision-making.
D&B Rating measures a company’s business credit rating against other companies in the same field. Data is provided on net worth, equity, number of employees, and financial stability and risk. Other factors include age of the company, trade payments, payment history, and public filings.
Your company may already have D&B number. You may have applied for credit from a creditor who uses D&B to research business credit. When the creditor pulls your credit profile from D&B, this automatically creates a DUNS for your company. You didn’t have to do a thing. You will likely even have a credit profile already if that organization extended credit to your business.
You could also register for the number from the D&B service online. Before you apply be sure to use their search feature to see if your company has already been issued a number. If you haven’t already been issued a number, it may take up to 30 days to get your new number from the company, unless you purchase one of the credit services.
D&B has a number of credit products they offer to lenders. They are most often used to obtain their Paydex score, which is generated by what your creditors report about you. To get a DUNS number with a credit history attached to it, you will either have to have a business loan that reports to D&B, or pay for the privilege.
D&B has a credit building service where they charge you for the privilege of placing your own credit information into your credit file. For a few hundred dollars you can send them your business credit references and they will place them onto your report. The value of this service is questionable since there will be a notation on the information that it was self-reported. It is far easier to simply do business with a company that reports to D&B.
Your goal with D&B should be to obtain a Paydex score over 80. It’s at this point where financial institutions will consider removing a personal credit check and guarantee for the extension of credit to a small business. You will still have creditors that require personal guarantees, but without an 80 Paydex from a creditor that looks for this score, you aren’t likely to get a loan without also personally guaranteeing it.
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