Financial Services, Latvia, Markets and Companies

Moreover, 1.5% of those companies are likely to go bankrupt within a year, said Intars Mikelsons, Commercial Director of Kreditinformacijas Birojs.

At the same time, 47% of Latvian SMEs have excellent, very good or good credit ratings which means they are unlikely to run into financial trouble during the next 12 months.

Among the medium-sized and large companies, 12% of businesses are on the verge of insolvency and nearly 1% might go bankrupt in a year's time while 63% of companies in this sector have excellent credit ratings.

All in all, about a half of more than 60,000 companies doing business in Latvia are in a stable financial position.

Today 10,000 Latvian SMEs were emailed their credit rating reports. The purpose of the initiative is to show the company managers the information about their company that is available to other market players and which is important for their corporate reputation and future borrowings. The credit ratings are based on the information from the Latvian business register and the information that participants of the credit information system have supplied about the payment discipline of their customers.

Kreditinformacijas Birojs was founded in May 2013 by Germany's Creditinfo International GmbH and several Latvian banks -- ABLV Bank, Citadele Bank, DNB Banka, Nordea Bank, SEB Banka and Swedbank Latvia. In September 2015 Kreditinformacijas Birojs became the first credit information bureau in Latvia licensed by the Latvian State Inspectorate of Data.