Why Business Gateway matters to small business owners?
After high winds swept through greater Edmonton, P.J., a local roofing specialist, saw demand for his services soar. Eager to help his community in their time of need, P.J. found himself in a difficult position. He couldn’t scale up fast enough because securing financing for additional equipment and staff took too long.
Small business owner wants:
“For a small business to be set up for long-term success, it all comes down to their ability to access funds. You need to pay to play,” says Joshua Farrington, Commercial Financial Institution Consultant with Equifax Canada. “For someone like P.J., that’s really hard because small business lending is incredibly reliant on the traditional consumer credit score.”
Many self-employed and small business owners use personal credit while juggling irregular income streams, which is not sustainable for their consumer credit score in the long run.
Small business lender needs:
“Maybe P.J. can get a business loan with one of the banks,” explains Farrington. “But in all likelihood, it could be a tough sell. Big financial institutions often need time to review documentation before extending credit and that can mean P.J. doesn’t get fast access to funds and meanwhile, he's losing opportunities.”
Equifax Canada’s investment in moving its data assets to the Equifax Cloud has led to the latest solution for businesses - Business Gateway, a solution that provides lenders with a new way to evaluate the credit worthiness of self-employed or small business owners such as P.J.
Business Gateway blends personal credit information with multiple databases including Commercial and Consumer Credit Scores as well as other data sources such as PayNet data, and collates it into a single holistic credit view. Business Gateway for Small Business is accessed through the online Equifax portal, Client Central, with no costly or complicated IT overhead required.
Equifax Canada has the solution
Farrington says for someone like P.J., the Business Gateway report could make all the difference in getting the capital loans he needs now to help his neighbours and to build his business — a potential win for the whole community.
Equifax standardizes and organizes the data to make it easy for businesses. “When we're talking about the process of gathering credit information to make a credit decision, we want to make it smooth and easy,” says Farrington. “We now have this powerful tool that allows lenders to pull these different small business data sets together in a way that makes sense to the lender.”
(If you’re looking for ways to support your Small and Medium-sized Business clients, Equifax Canada can provide you with insights that can help you improve portfolio performance across the lending lifecycle. For more information on Business Gateway, visit our website or you can reach us directly at 1-855-233-9226.)
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