Creditsafe launched its new ratings model in late August, resulting in an immediate downgrade to a number of printers' credit scores, many of which have gone from very low to very high risk.

One £3.6m turnover, 30 staff printer saw its credit rating slashed from 94 to 20, while other examples seen by PrintWeek include downgrades from 87 to 39, 95 to 38 and 94 to seven.

Meanwhile, one print supplier had its credit score upgraded from nine to 59 and its recommended credit limit extended from zero to £4.45m, with no explanation for the change.

Creditsafe has attributed the high degree of flux in companies' credit scores to the introduction of a new ratings algorithm that takes into account data drawn from tens of millions of trade payments.

A spokesman said: "In late August 2014 Creditsafe introduced an enhanced ratings model incorporating more than 88 million trade payment experiences, which feed into the overall algorithm to establish a business’ financial health and propensity to enter insolvency in the next 12 months.

"As a result of these changes, credit ratings and proposed trade credit limits for companies on the system may have changed. These changes have seen Creditsafe recommend increases in total aggregate trade limits across all categories of company, from small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) through to major multi-national corporations."

Creditsafe stressed that there was no specific upgrading or downgrading of company ratings or limits assigned on the basis of the industry in which they operate and added that any changes in risk banding and trade credit limits were down to the inclusion of more comprehensive payment data.

"Trade data experiences are sourced from suppliers’ ledger systems and feed into the system directly from a client’s accounting software. The data is processed utilising comparable security links to those employed by the banking industry," the spokesman said.

"Payment experience data is only integrated as a variable into the ratings algorithm when multiple payment experiences are available. This ensures there is no opportunity for an enterprise to manipulate, or ‘game’, the system to negatively impact any other company’s rating."

However, Ian Carrotte, chief executive of print industry credit specialist ICSM said that the introduction of the new ratings model meant less transparency and could make it harder for printers to challenge their scores.

"Some of the data causing the ratings or scores to change is now invisible and anonymous, or at best extremely difficult to access. It is natural to distrust anonymous data gathered by computers from other anonymous computers," he said.

"If, as seems to be the case with many printing companies, your rating has dropped, the cause would usually be pretty obvious within the body of the credit report, [but] it may now be that you will have to consider that a computer programme somewhere has anonymously classified your customer (or you) as a bad payer."

Creditsafe has said that companies with specific concerns about changes to their credit rating should email ratingenquiries@creditsafeuk.com.

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