State of Business Credit 2012

The smaller surety bonds, commercial surety bonds, license and permit bonds and the like are underwritten and priced almost exclusively on the personal credit score of the principal. Performance and payment bonds or bonds for large commercial enterprises, the credit of the busiess will be a consideration in the underwritng and pricing of the bond.

Experian, one of the three major credit reporting agencies in the U.S. recently published its State of Credit 2012.   While personal credit scores increased overall since 2011, the average  credit scores for businesses decreased 4.4%. While this maybe a little discouraging, business bankruptcies decreased 4% over the last year and there was an 11.3% increase in the number of new businesses established over the last year.

It is quite possible that the decrease in overall business credit and the increase in overall businesses formed could be related. New businesses sometimes struggle to get started.  Capital is hard to come by and growing pains for most new businesses are a fairly common occurrence.

Las Vegas, one of the cities with the largest improvement in consumer credit, had improvements in overall business credit scores, a dramatic decrease in business bankruptcies and an a 64.4% increase in the number of of newly established businesses.