CreditPal recently conducted two surveys of UK businesses, one with YouGov and the other with the Forum of Private Business (FPB). They show that 68 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) now produce monthly management accounts to improve their own internal cash and financial management processes and only 17 per cent did so to meet the increased requirements from the finance and credit industry.

This is reflected in the fact that 96 per cent of the respondents improved their cash position through better controls rather than looking for outside financing. Pursuing late payers (76 per cent) heads the list, with placing tighter controls on ordering supplies (67 per cent) next, followed by internal cost-cutting (67 per cent) and then deferring payments to HMRC under the government’s ‘Time to Pay” scheme (25 per cent).

This is a considerable change over the past 18 months and is a reflection of two events: 50 per cent of UK businesses have lost money because either a supplier or customer defaulted; 80 per cent of UK businesses did not seek outside finance.