Does my Credit Score Affect Business Energy Prices?

Running a business is all about building good relationships, and there’s no relationship more important than the one between your business credit score and your energy rates. If you’ve got a healthy business credit score, you’ll benefit from a healthy range of energy suppliers UK and you’ll have more options when it comes to choosing business energy suppliers too. If you’re looking to get cheap business electricity, or a deal on your gas for business prices, you need to ensure you’ve got a sparkling business credit score.

Business Credit Score – What is it?

You probably know about your personal credit score, but did you know your business has one too? It’s different from your own personal credit score, as this rating is a score that’s based on how probable it is that your business will fail within the upcoming year. (Yep, let’s focus on the positive, hey?!) The business credit score runs on a scale from 1-100. You need to be looking at a rating of 40 and over to ensure you get the best deals from business energy providers.

How can I improve my Credit Score Rating

Are you happy with your business score or are you looking for ways to boost it? If you’d like to see your business score rating improve so that you can benefit from better business electricity plans and gas deals, then here’s how -

• Pay on time – this one’s the easiest and simplest thing you can do to immediately improve your business credit rating. Pay your bills on time otherwise your credit score will take a hit
• Set up credit accounts – if you use specific companies or suppliers on a regular basis, and you’ve got a good solid relationship with them, a great way to boost your credit score is by setting up a credit account with them. This history of positive payment activities will show up on your business credit file and help raise your score
• Share your experiences – payment data isn’t always shared with credit-reporting agencies for businesses. However, you can easily add trade references onto your own business’s credit file via a credit reporting agency. This is a great way to manually add details of positive payments and help boost your credit score
• If you’re worried about negative feedback on your file, it might be possible to get it removed. You can dispute errors with credit card companies and ask credit reporting agencies to ensure incorrect or outdated information is removed from your file. This will help make sure your credit score is only affected by relevant, up-to-date information

Why does an Energy Supplier check your Credit Score?

Does it feel a little sneaky that UK energy providers check your credit score before they decide to offer cheap business energy deals? The thing is, you wouldn’t start a relationship with someone without doing a little research beforehand, would you? This credit score check is just that – a bit of research to ensure you’re a decent candidate for them to offer a good deal to, and will pay on time when your bill comes through.

Even the cheapest business energy supplier will have huge bills of their own to pay as they will be sourcing energy in large quantities. So, they need to make sure that the businesses that they are supplying their cheap business energy deals to, will be able to pay on time – otherwise it could be detrimental to their own business.

Energy brokers will also check your credit score to get a better understanding of your company. They might be looking to see if you’re in a high-risk sector, and this could affect whether they decide to offer you business utilities.

What if I have a Bad Credit Score?

If you’ve discovered that your credit score is a little less than squeaky clean, then don’t feel too disheartened. If you are prepared to put the legwork in and make sure your business is on the up and your credit score will improve, then feel positive that any current issues are only temporary ones.

It’s true that businesses with bad credit ratings won’t get the best deals from commercial energy brokers, and some business energy providers won’t engage with your business at all. If you do manage to get an energy deal, then your energy provider may still look to implement things such as -

• Paying by Direct Debit
• Installing a meter that takes prepayments
• Only accepting you once you’ve paid a security deposit
• Charging extra or an additional premium

Although it may be tough in the short term, if you are actively working on improving your business’s credit score, then you shouldn’t have to put up with high business electricity tariffs and gas prices for too long.

Is it time to Change?

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