Your sights are firmly set on steering your business in the right direction, getting new contracts under your belt, achieving growth and increasing profits. The continuous expansion of world trade demands that your business must be increasingly competitive, notwithstanding a steady stream of economic and political difficulties. Prospects for increasing business can be significant, but bring with it a variety of operational and financial risks, including constraints on working capital, unacceptable concentrations of accounts receivable and payment defaults.

In the modern business environment your clients ask you for credit terms so you need to give credit terms. At the same time, there are greater concentrations of risks and increases in failures. The Client Account is the only account not covered in your balance sheet. Are your customers going to pay you? Are they going to be bankrupt? There could be a host of reasons for non-payment, and the loss of a large payment may spell disaster for your business, whatever the prudence and competence exercised. On the other hand, too cautious an attitude in evaluating risk and selecting buyers may result in loss of hard-to-get business opportunities.