Confirm your builder's identity and gain a deeper insight into their past performance with a D&B Report.

Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) is the world's leader in business reports with data on more than 130 million companies worldwide including Australian & New Zealand. Our data is used by thousands of companies to determine the credit, financial and payment risk of their customers and suppliers.

This same data is also available to consumers. A D&B report can be an important source of information in determining who you wish to partner with on your most important investment decision - the family home.

A D&B report allows you to assess the historical performance of a building company and identify areas of risk. A D&B report can:

• confirm a builder exists and is registered as a company with ASIC
• identify whether a building company has been subject to any previous court actions
• identify whether a building company has been subject to any previous collections activity for outstanding debts
• verify the identity of the Directors of a building company and find out if they have been associated with any other companies that have failed.

A D&B report can also include our unique predictors of financial distress and delinquent payments. These two predictors are:

• Dynamic Risk Score (DRS) predicts the likelihood that a company will experience financial distress in the next 12 months
• Dynamic Delinquency Score (DDS) predicts the likelihood that a company will pay its bills in a severely delinquent manner in the next 12 months. Delinquent payments can be a sign that a company is suffering cash flow stress.

In 2007 more than 200 building companies collapsed in Australia leaving thousands of consumers out of pocket with lost deposits or half completed homes. In 2008 approximately 10% of building companies are rated a high risk of experiencing financial distress.

Yet for many of these companies there are early warning signs that they may have a high level of financial risk. Previous court actions, poor payment habits and Directors who have been associated with previously failed companies are all warning signs that a builder may be at risk of financial distress.

Given that building a home is the largest financial decision most families will undertake it makes sense to gather as much information on your builder as possible.

Our reports range in price from $363 for a full D&B report - which provides access to all the information we have on a builder including identity verification, court actions and our unique DRS and DDS predictors - through to $17.60 for an ASIC extract which allows you to confirm the basic identity details of a company.

To order a D&B report click here

To learn more about our reports visit our D&B Express page

A D&B report can be a critical source of information on the history and performance of your building company. There are also a range of others pieces of information you should seek to obtain such as whether your builder is registered, whether they have indemnity insurance, do they comply with an industry code of conduct and do they have references.

D&B recommends you check these areas out as well before selecting a builder.

To learn more about D&B data and how it is used visit our quality of D&B's data page.