Thoughts on business credit from a trade group participant.(National Association of Credit Management)

During a meeting of NACM Southwest's National Telecommunications Credit Group, in Las Vegas, Feb. 9 and 10, Steve Pellegrene took a brief break to share some of his observations with NACM. Pellegrene is the Group Manager of Credit Risk Management for AT&T Business Services, where he has 32 credit analysts reporting to him. His area of responsibility involves the analyzing of credit applications for telecommunications services. Pellegrene, who advocates the value of belonging to a credit trade group, spoke as an individual credit professional and not as an official company spokesman.

Meetings for this particular trade group take place quarterly in various locations around the country. In addition to obtaining financial information on current and perspective customers, participants can obtain trade credit information at a trade group meeting. Noting that trade information is also very revealing about a company's credit picture, he said, "If I hear from several creditors that a customer is severely delinquent in their payments, I look at the company more closely. The red flag goes "up the pole" a little bit more. I would probably want to treat that company more conservatively when they come in for an application to extend more credit to them." Firms that may be committing fraudulent or other less than desirable financial practices with respect to their debtors can be more easily spotted when a group of companies come together at trade group meetings to share their customer experiences. "If we know that a company is hurting other ...