What do "class," "percentile" and "score" mean?

The Commercial Credit Score uses statistical probabilities to classify companies into three risk classifications, which provide different views of the same underlying data. In most cases, the Credit Score Class is your best choice for at-a-glance risk assessment. The more detailed percentile and score classifications provide more granular views of this information, which can provide a more specific classification when you want to see precisely where a business falls on the spectrum of risk. The classifications are:

  1. Commercial Credit Risk Class

    A Commercial Credit Risk Class of 1-5 is a segmentation of the scoreable universe into five distinct groups where a one (1) represents businesses that have the lowest probability of delinquency, and five (5) represents businesses with the highest probability of delinquency. This Class enables a customer to quickly segment their new and existing accounts into various risk segments to determine appropriate marketing or credit policies. Note: Commercial Credit Scores are not calculated for those businesses designated as "Discontinued at This Location", "Open Bankruptcy", or "Higher Risk". These records are automatically assigned a score of zero (0).

  2. Commercial Credit Score Percentile

    The Commercial Credit Score Percentile is a 1-100 ranking where a percentile of 1 has the highest probability of delinquency and a percentile of 100 has the lowest probability of delinquency. This Percentile illustrates where a company falls among businesses in the D&B information base, and is most effectively used to rank order portfolios from highest to lowest risk of business failure.

  3. Commercial Credit Score

    The Commercial Credit Score (CCS) predicts the likelihood of a business paying its bills in a severely delinquent manner (90 days or more past terms), obtaining legal relief from creditors or ceasing operations without paying all creditors in full over the next 12 months. D&B defines severe delinquency as a business with at least 25% of its payments slow and at least 10% of its payments 90 days or more past due, based on the information in D&B's commercial database. The score ranges from 101 to 670, where 101 represent the highest probability and 670 represent the lowest probability of delinquency. This score classification enables you to use more granular cutoffs if you are using the data from the Comprehensive Report as part of a more automated decision-making process.