201504 CM April

PAYMENT TRENDS
ON THE RIGHT TRACK
Jason Braidwood MCICM(Grad), Head of Sales Ledger Consultancy at Creditsafe Business
Solutions, analyses the latest monthly business-to-business payment performance statistics:
WELL St Valentine appears
to have helped spread the
love during February with
improved payments throughout
the country and across most industry
sectors, according to our monthly
analysis of Creditsafe’s trade payment
data databases. By the end of the month,
average days beyond terms had taken a
turn for the better with an improvement of
more than one and a half days, and they
are now standing at a UK average of 16
and a half days. While it’s good to see
this move in the right direction, this is still
nothing to be proud of and we can only
hope that spring will see this positive trend
continue to improve. As ever, it’s good to
take a clear focus on the varying trends
between industries and regions to help you
prioritise your collection targeting.
INDUSTRY SECTORS
When we look at the sectors it’s interesting
to note that business support in general
appears to be slipping back with
Professional and Scientific and Business
Admin and Support heading our list of
worsening sectors – a noticeable step back
for the latter from January. However, when
we look at the sectors with the poorest
performance overall, we should perhaps
be worried by the continuing late payment
trends in Manufacturing Transportation and
Agriculture – all big important economic
sectors in the heart of the ‘real economy’
with a wider impact and all continuing to
pay well over 20 days beyond terms.
On the more positive side, Water and
Waste has certainly pulled itself back
with a major improvement to once again
reinforce the better performance of the
Utilities sector as a whole who continue to
dominate the ‘prompter payers’ section of
our analysis.
REGIONS
The good news on improving payments
appears to be fairly well spread around the
country in a reverse of January’s position,
with only Yorkshire and Humberside and
East Anglia showing a worsening
position. Given that East Anglia is one
of the better regions that seems almost
forgivable – although the Yorkshire and
Humberside performance does stand
out against the rest of the country. Big
improvements in the East Midlands and
Scotland were encouraging, and it is very
welcome to see London back up the
list of prompter paying regions given its
importance to the economy as a whole.
The disappointing performance from
Yorkshire and the North West doesn’t quite
point to a North-South divide, however,
with the South West also fairly static in
its performance at over 18 days beyond
terms.
Jason Braidwood MCICM(Grad)
Head of Sales Ledger Consultancy at
Creditsafe Business Solutions
38 April 2015 www.cicm.com
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