thing of equal impact that make it easy to get upper management’s attention. But opportunity does knock, if you’re paying
attention and ready to act. “It turned in terms of questioning
ourselves: ‘What are we doing? Is it effective? Do we have the
right focus?” he said.
achieve progress.” He added that the ability to develop peer
relationships and network through the association can help
advocate for needed business changes. In short, it helps build
a physical mass of people and voices needed to push a certain
platform forward.
As the US economy rebounds and risk falls, so too might the
importance of the credit function in the eyes of upper management, unless there’s a continuing effort to show value. Performing sensitivity analysis in terms of to what extent your
AR portfolio is subject to interest rate rises or to what extent
the company is reliant on banking cover for a company’s
exports are examples Vermylen offered. “You show value by
showing you know your customers,” he said. “Do the analysis.
Look at what happens if interest rates go up 200 basis points.
A lot of companies will be under water, straight away. We’ve
been living in very good times, owing to the loose monetary
policy of our central bankers.”
While technological advancements in credit seem to be
becoming more deeply engrained in the credit world, in a positive way, and the importance of political risk and central bank
knowledge is returning, Vermylen also hopes to see a greater
push in the future about the importance of benchmarking. He
admits, the inner-workings of proper benchmarking and
metrics can be difficult for many to understand and perhaps
even more difficult to boil down to a wide audience.
Vermylen also recommends talking to credit colleagues,
learning their success stories and testing out new ideas when
attending networking-heavy professional conferences.
The Role of FCIB
“FCIB I think has a unique place as far as educating and
bringing people together,” Vermylen said. “If you actually
have something new to tell in the world of credit and there
wasn’t an organization like FCIB, it would be more difficult to
“It’s not the easiest to crack that nut,” Vermylen said. “While
not an easy space, to establish more kinds of benchmarking
useful to most people would be a feat. I’m talking about it
being useful not just in payment behavior, but professionals’
people skills, salary level and even softer stuff people have to
deal with within corporations. For instance, what generally
is the right level to pay a credit analyst these days? To date,
this if very diffi