Creditor Watch was founded in 2010 by managing director Colin Porter, who knows the printing industry thanks to six years spent as sales manager, magazines, at PMP in the ’90s.

The credit company looks sets for rapid expansion after securing a major injection of capital by Nightingale Partners, which is owned by Lazard Australia, the company that made $100 million after selling Dun & Bradstreet in 2010.

Porter said: “The investment from Nightingale Partners allows CreditorWatch to expand far more rapidly than could have been achieved through natural growth alone.”

The former PMP sales manager said the service was ideally suited to the this industry.

“I know that printers work on high invoice value, low-margin work and slow payers or a payment default can seriously impact on printers’ viability.

“There are so many printers in the market, allowing an organisation to burn one printer and then easily move on to the next.”

Porter is currently in talks with the Printing Industries Association of Australia in the hopes the service will gain traction with its members.

The CreditorWatch database currently has fewer than 100 printers on board, but Porter stressed that the more who joined up, the more valuable the service would be for everyone.

“CreditorWatch allows businesses to share default information, register payment defaults and monitor new and existing customers for any change in their credit worthiness,” he said.

The site will soon add a new feature allowing users to receive court judgement alerts of customers that they are monitoring.

“A judgement alert should prompt you to take precautionary measures to protect you from default if you intend or provide them credit,” he said.

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