Experian business benchmark report

On November 12, 2009, Experian announced its Business Benchmark Report, a monthly look at how businesses are faring in the United States. Designed to monitor the progress of business recovery, the report looks at four key indicators of business health, including commercial risk score, days beyond payment terms, percent of dollars delinquent and percent of dollars severely delinquent.

These indicators are then broken out by size of business, industry group and region. Experian's Business Benchmark Report also tracks the percent change of these metrics over the last six months to provide a broader view of business performance in each area.

Key findings from the first Business Benchmark Report (October 2009):

Size of business:

• Businesses with more than twenty employees are decreasing the percent of delinquent dollars outstanding, whereas businesses with one to nineteen employees are seeing a rise in delinquencies.
• Non-employer firms (businesses that have no paid employees) have also seen a decrease in the percent of delinquent dollars outstanding -- with a more than ten percent improvement over the last six months.
• Businesses with more than 250 employees have a lower rate of severe delinquency when compared with all businesses. Only two percent of their dollars outstanding are considered severely delinquent (91 or more days), as opposed to the national average of five percent.

Industry group:

• In general, commercial risk scores (on a scale of 1 to 100) continue to decline across almost every industry group, indicating a higher average risk of delinquency over the next 12 months. Businesses in the Utilities group, however, have an average commercial credit score of 70.64 -- well above (16.4 percent) the national average of 60.68. Businesses in the Health and Education Services industry groups are also doing better than the national average, coming in at 65.29 and 65.03 respectively.
• Businesses in the Hospitality industry group show the lowest average credit scores at 56.12, which is 8.1 percent below the national average.
• With the holidays approaching, it is noteworthy that retail is among the industry groups with the lowest commercial credit scores. With an average of 56.66, the retail industry's score is 6.6 percent below the national average.

Region:

• Businesses in the Southwest, South Central and Mountain regions are showing signs of improvement, with a decline in the average percent of delinquent dollars in the last six months.
• In the Northeast and New England, businesses show the largest increase in the percent of delinquent dollars over the last six months.
• For the month of October, businesses in the Midwest show the greatest negative variance in the percent of delinquent dollars, coming in at 15.8 percent above the national average, followed by the Northeast at 13.9 percent above the national average.