Company payments: Germany, the Netherlands and France good. Spain and Italy steady. The UK, Belgium and Portugal bad

67% of companies in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands and Belgium were punctual in the payment of their suppliers, or did not exceed an average of 15 days beyond the due date. Germany was above average, and in fact improved compared to 2008 with an 83% share of “good payers”, followed by the Netherlands (74%) and France (71.2%). Spain and Italy were slightly above the average payment behavior with 67.1% and 68.5% of good payers, respectively. However, Italy saw a drop compared to the previous year, albeit relatively contained (2%), whereas the decrease in Spain was more significant.
The situation in Belgium, the UK and Portugal, on the other hand, is negative. British companies in particular are not punctual payers and show significant lateness with respect to the European average. In fact, only 53.1% of companies were identified as good payers, with a worsening of over 4 percentage points compared to 2008. Portugal trails behind in the classification, with the percentage of companies paying punctually not exceeding 50%.
This, in summary, is what emerged from the 2010 edition of the payment behavior study of European companies carried out by CRIBIS D&B, a company specializing in business information, and created from the acquisition of D&B Italia by CRIF, leading group in credit information and decisional support systems.

The payment habits of European countries considered in the study did not show common trends in 2009. Germany continues to use very strict contractual payment terms (0-30 days) whereas at the opposite end of the scale Spain prefers much more delayed payments (90-120 days). Companies in Belgium, Italy and the UK, on the other hand, give preference to contractual payment deadlines of between 30 and 60 days. Meanwhile, the Netherlands and Portugal use payment terms varying between 0 and 90 days.

In the category of bad payers, with late payments greater than an average of 90 days, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy come out on top in terms of the lowest number of bad payers. Specifically, the percentages of Dutch and French companies considered bad payers are 2.2% and 2.7%, respectively, compared to a European average of 5.8%. The situation is also positive in Italy and Belgium where the percentages of companies which manage business transactions with more than 90 days over the agreed terms are 3.3% and 4.3%, respectively. The UK and Spain, on the other hand, show above average levels of bad payers with 7.5% and 9.6%, respectively, whereas the worst performance is in Portugal with 10.6% of bad payers.

According to the Cribis D&B Study, on a sector-based level there was general stability in payment behavior in Europe in 2009 compared to the previous year. Sectors showing improvement compared to 2008 were agriculture, industry and the extraction industry, with around 70% of companies paying on time or with an average late payment limited to 15 days, with less than 6% of companies paying later than 90 days from the agreed terms. The situation is more problematic in the retail sector and for financial services where there are less than 64% of good payers, whereas more than 7% belong to the classes of serious overdue payments (over 90 average days).

“Payment behavior is a fundamental tool for taking the pulse of companies – commented Marco Preti, the CEO of CRIBIS D&B – Compared to traditional public information such as company balance sheets, payment behavior represents a more accurate snapshot, providing a representation of a company which is not static like balance sheets, but dynamic and constantly evolving, which enables short and medium term forecasts to be made. For this reason – continued Marco Preti – every company should keep its payment behavior in terms of clients, partners and suppliers under control in order to catch any changes and problems before they are translated into non-positive figures, or worse into litigation. Many problems could be managed on time and proactively.”