Business news for the finance professional

Trade Risk Group is always striving to learn what is most important about current economic and financial conditions, and looks to consolidate the most useful information and provide it for the benefit of credit and risk management professionals. View past issues of our Extra Credit Newsletter; if you would like to receive this newsletter electronically as we publish them, please contact us and you will be added to our private list.

• Bad Debts: More than just principal is lost

  It's official. The customer/client is insolvent or bankrupt with no hope of recovery. Either way (depending upon your specific credit policy and procedure) the next step would suggest that the account balance be written off to bad debts and life goe...

• Are letters of credit hurting your business?

  If you are exporting and insisting on letters of credit as payment, you are probably losing business to your competitors who are offering open terms. If this is the case, you should look into export credit insurance as an alternative to letters of c...

• Accounts Receivable: How to Tame the Beast

  You don't want to wrestle with Your accounts receivables - You just want to tame them. If you take steps to manage your receivables by applying the right kind of pressure at the right time, the beast can be tamed. Following are seven steps: The Fi...

• 6 Ways to reduce unworkable letters of credit

  Credit managers are often faced with the task of getting paid when they have a letter of credit that contains conflicting issues. Compounding this problem is the fact that banks have no incentive to change their practices regarding fee-generating se...

• Six tips to getting financial statements

  One of the biggest problems that most companies face is getting financial statements from customers. It seems that only the very few companies that possess some kind of tremendous leverage can get financial statements all the time. Most have to acce...