At Company Watch, we empower organisations to make confident, data-driven decisions by providing clarity in financial risk. One such success story comes from Radius, a leading fleet management company. Here, Company Watch has become central to the risk assessment process for their diverse portfolio of services across the UK and Ireland, enhancing efficiency and fraud detection.
Client
Radius is rapidly evolving into a comprehensive fleet management powerhouse, aiming to be the ultimate one-stop shop for any business operating a vehicle fleet. Their extensive service lines span fuel, insurance, charge cards, fleet management solutions, and telecommunications.
Gemma Knight, Head of Credit at Radius, and Lewis Culpin, Credit Manager, oversee the critical functions of underwriting and monitoring across their UK and Irish operations. We sat down with them to find out more about how they use Company Watch. Their primary objective is to ensure that credit decisions are not only swift and effective but also underpinned by robust, real-time data, crucial for navigating a volatile market.
With a business encompassing various sectors, the Radius team is tasked with balancing growth opportunities against stringent risk controls. This demands tools that offer precision, agility, and comprehensive financial visibility across their diverse client base.
Challenge
Previously, Radius grappled with highly manual processes and fragmented data sources for evaluating corporate creditworthiness. This reliance on disparate systems meant information didn’t “quite speak to each other properly,” and they were often “relying on outdated credit reports or outdated information from months previous,” as Lewis explains.
These inefficiencies not only slowed down decision-making but also introduced significant risk, particularly with the unpredictable nature of fuel pricing. Proactively monitoring existing customers and effectively detecting fraud risks also proved challenging.
“The biggest challenge for us at the moment is the volatile fuel pricing. We always need to make sure that we’ve got the most up-to-date kit that we can offer our customers, whether that be systems, whether that be process, whether that be the speed that we get the product to the customer.”
Gemma Knight, Head of Credit
Solution
After a thorough exploration of available platforms, Radius strategically integrated Company Watch directly into their credit operations workflow. The platform’s intuitive ease of use, immediate access to up-to-date insights, and its ability to consolidate fragmented information instantly boosted the speed and accuracy of their financial analysis.
Company Watch quickly became an indispensable daily tool for credit decision-making, supporting all new applications and increasingly being utilised for the proactive monitoring of existing customers. Our rich data sets, including crucial H-Scores® and monitoring alerts, alongside advanced predictive features like Stela AI and Vigilance™, empowered Gemma and Lewis’s teams to approve or deny credit limits with significantly greater precision and to proactively identify potential issues.
“We’ve been using Company Watch now for around 6 months. It gives us up-to-date insight quickly. We’re not relying on outdated credit reports or outdated information from months previous. It’s instant.”
Gemma Knight, Head of Credit
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How has Company Watch helped Nexus meet their business targets?
Results
Since implementing Company Watch, Radius has dramatically reduced the time taken to process applications, enabling their underwriters to make quicker, more informed decisions. They have significantly minimised manual tasks and successfully unified disparate information into a cohesive, single view. Risk-related losses have seen a notable reduction, particularly through the effective use of the H-Score® and monitoring alerts, allowing them to “mitigate future risk that we maybe wouldn’t have found previously,” as Lewis states.
The user-friendly interface, offering both simple and detailed views, shortened the learning curve for the team, enabling Radius to quickly scale usage and apply a consistent risk assessment approach across their diverse portfolio.
“What convinced us to use Company Watch was ease of use; onboarding from Company Watch themselves has been really, really helpful.”
Lewis Culpin, Credit Manager
For the team, Stela AI has also been a significant time-saver, providing quick, easy-to-read overviews of companies and eliminating the need for manual write-ups.
Furthermore, Vigilance™ has proven instrumental in their fight against fraud, flagging critical risks such as duplicate accounts and virtual offices, enabling the team to swiftly identify and investigate potential issues.
A Trusted Strategic Partner: Company Watch and Radius
Company Watch has fundamentally transformed the credit analysis landscape at Radius. What began as a search for more reliable and efficient financial data has evolved into a strategic partnership that actively supports long-term risk management, operational excellence, and robust fraud prevention.
Gemma and Lewis’s teams are now better equipped to stay ahead of the game in a volatile market, proactively managing their financial exposure across all business lines. They continue to leverage Company Watch’s powerful features to enhance their monitoring capabilities, ensuring they conduct better reviews on customers and maintain the financial health of their extensive client base.
“We absolutely would recommend Company Watch to our company peers. We found it really effective and it just really helps our day to day tasks.”
Lewis Culpin, Credit Manager
Find out more about our holistic suite of business information solutions. Speak to a member of the Sales team today.
