Credit Management September 2019

OPINION
AUTHOR – Jo Kettner
on board and are actively developing new
tools that can highlight more effectively the
questions that our users may want to ask of the
businesses they are about to engage with.
SHARING IS CARING
One part of the current Companies House
consultation looks at the benefits of
sharing information between government
departments. A pilot project between
Companies House and HMRC has been
so successful in highlighting anomalies
between accounts information filed for
Corporation Tax purposes and those filed for
the public register that it has been extended.
There are many other data sets which, if used
in conjunction with each other as triangulation
points could go a long way to bringing to light
potentially fraudulent behaviour.
The focus of the Companies House
consultation seems to be on law enforcement
and using these data sets within government,
but I would argue that there should be
some means of sharing at least part of this
information with trusted third parties that
adhere to minimum standards of security and
disclosure requirements, in much the same
way as VAT Registration data is currently shared
under the Small Business, Enterprise and
Employment Act 2015. Linkages can be made
using official, but non-public datasets, to help
all those users of Companies House data have
more confidence that multiple official sources
are being used to create a fuller picture of what
is going on behind the scenes.
Credit management is an art, not a science:
each business has a different appetite for
risk versus reward and there are all kinds of
tools out there to provide different things
on the spectrum from data, to information,
intelligence and insight: it is the credit
manager’s job to bring all this together, to
make a business decision based on evidence,
experience, risk appetite and instinct.
But Mr Campbell is right: in order to make
an informed decision, you must understand
the source of the information being used and
why our algorithms are producing the results
that they are. That is why we put a huge amount
of time into making our scores transparent
and providing explanations. Machine learning
does not always make this easy, but we are
committed to providing our users with some
level of explanation and drill-down so that
they understand the basis on which they are
making their decisions.
See our interview with Louise Smyth, Chief
Executive at Companies House on page 16.
The focus of the Companies House
consultation seems to be on law
enforcement and using these data sets
within government, but I would argue that
there should be some means of sharing at
least part of this information with trusted
third parties that adhere to minimum
standards of security and disclosure
requirements
Jo Kettner is
CEO of Company Watch.
The Recognised Standard / www.cicm.com / September 2019 / PAGE 21