Coronavirus (COVID-19): Steps to consider for your business

1. Portfolio risk monitoring

There's no doubt that many individuals and businesses will have greater exposure to financial stress in the coming months. Monitoring the health of your customer portfolios becomes even more important in these circumstances. Equifax provides access to over 40 near real-time triggers, and digital customer engagement and payment platforms that can help organisations be better equipped to move quickly and proactively manage customer vulnerability to minimise exposure.

2. Use technology to reframe customer affordability

With calls for relaxed payment schedules and increased access to credit, technology is vital for enabling a broader understanding of changing customer borrowing needs. Equifax provides affordability assessment tools leveraging insights from transaction data and comprehensive credit reporting which can help make faster, responsible lending decisions.

3. Register your security interests on the PPSR

It’s important to check that your security interests are registered successfully on the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) to be in a stronger position to reclaim your goods or money in the event of a third-party’s insolvency. Registration mistakes and late registrations may weaken or invalidate your rights to this protection.

4. Replace face-to-face interactions and verification

With the inability to conduct face-to-face verification of identity, identifying genuine customers can be done quickly and efficiently with biometric technology. As customer traffic and transactions move to digital, a more frictionless user experience can be provided with biometric capability.

5. Assess financial viability of suppliers

Seek an independent, objective opinion on financial viability. Equifax provides clear and comprehensive financial viability assessments, credit ratings and industry benchmarking to assess tender, procurement and contract risk. 

6. Be alert to fast-evolving application fraud risk

Expect fraudsters to take advantage of every new opportunity. The government underwriting of loans to small and medium-sized businesses requires vigilance against application fraud. Equifax can provide a FraudCheck service that uses unique, differentiated data, insights and customisable scoring to detect linkages and suspicious patterns – helping determine if the customer is who they claim to be.

Call your Equifax Account Manager or request a call back if you need to discuss ways to help manage your risk.