Business

With a 3-year business survival rate of 63.3%, Kent ranked higher than the national median in 2019, which is excellent news for businesses in Kent. If you plan to start a new business in Kent or expand your existing one, you will have many business opportunities.

As a business owner, you deal with many business processes, from manufacturing, marketing, and maintaining your financial records. You can visit Approved Accounting in Kent to take care of the financial needs of your business.

To help you further, here are six tips that will help you while starting a business in Kent, UK.

Start Small And Expand Gradually

No matter how innovative a business idea you have or there’s a dire need for your product in the market, it is always best to start small and grow gradually. There are plenty of benefits to starting small. You can minimise various financial, legal, and operational risks.

Starting small also gives you more freedom to test your initial product and improve eventually. It also gives you a chance to get customer feedback by giving your product or service into the hands of your customers. The customer feedback and market response will provide valuable insights to make your product even more appealing to your target audience.

Learn from your mistakes and never repeat them.

It’s easy to face a setback and get demoralised by it. It’s important to understand that mistakes are a part of learning, and learning never goes in vain. It is understandable to make mistakes in business but make sure you don’t repeat those mistakes. There will be a lot of times when you have to make difficult decisions. In such cases, try to analyse the problem, use your experience, and take calculated risks. Even if it fails, you will know what not to do.

Keep track of business expenses and financial records.

Well-kept financial records are the backbone of any business. Keeping track of your business expenses and maintaining financial records should be one of your top priorities while running a business. Clear financial records will give you more insights into whether your business is making profits or not. You can hire your in-house accountants to look after your finances, or you can visit Approved Accounting in Kent to manage your bookkeeping needs by financial experts.

Find different methods of funding your business.

Money is the fuel to your business wagon. Your business should have a constant flow of capital to run your business processes smoothly. There are many ways to fund your business. You can invest your own money, borrow from friends and family or get an investor to fund your business. If your company solves a social problem or is highly innovative, crowdfunding can also be a suitable funding option for you. You can also apply for various business grants by the City of Kent, UK administration.

Leverage the power of digital marketing

Digital marketing is a great way to promote your business online and reach a wider audience. You can leverage various digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing, PPC ads, search engine optimisation to create a strong online presence. Social media is also an excellent medium to promote your products, services, sales, and discounts to your target audience.

Promote your business locally.

Similar businesses in Kent may sell the same product or service as you. To stay one step ahead of the competition, you need to combine your online marketing efforts with offline marketing. It will help you to create a strong local presence and get more local customers.

These are the six valuable tips to help you start a business in Kent, UK. Remember to take calculated risks and always keep your finances straight to avoid any problems.

The legacy anti-money laundering (AML) programs commonly implemented by banks are often run on static, rules-based systems. This typically doesn’t involve much more than tagging noteworthy cases one by one, then submitting the compiled data to a separate investigator for final analysis. But not only is this process long, tedious, and draining on the compliance team’s general productivity. When data gathering alone can take days or even weeks, the result is a low real-time detection rate for legitimate threats—which, as banks know, is dangerous to both their assets and their reputation.

But is there a better alternative to conventional case-by-case processing? Luckily for chief compliance officers and other staff who are involved in their home bank’s AML program, the answer is yes. If you’re a stakeholder in your bank’s AML program, you now have the option to explore more high-tech AML solutions that deploy graph analytics. Your new toolkit may require considerable investment and some key changes to the way you run your AML program, notably in the area of compliance. But for the insight, clarity, and protection it will afford you, the switch to a graph analytics-based solution may be well worth it.

Here’s how graph analytics can serve as your next big weapon to fight off financial criminals. Secure your system from threats of money laundering and other nefarious activities, and maintain a clean slate with your AML regulators and your customers.

Why Banks Need to Go Beyond Rules-Based AML Solutions

The simplest reason to consider changing tack in your AML strategy is this: money launderers, terrorist backers, and other financial criminals have become alarmingly good at covering their tracks. Their own methods include:

• Disguising their transactions to be virtually indistinguishable from those of other customers;
• Minimizing transactions with the same banking staff so as not to rouse suspicion, and;
• Moving money through “smurf” accounts, or accounts opened by people with clean records. At the outset, these front men will sport clean criminal records and won’t immediately appear to be connected to money laundering networks or terrorist syndicates.

Tactics such as these are both scary and frustrating for banks that lag behind on AML technologies. Insufficient AML systems make banks easy prey to well-established and technologically savvy criminal syndicates. In addition, these deficiencies will affect a bank’s standing and performance with its regulators, many of whom have levied steep penalties on institutions with slow and outdated AML programs.

Though it may seem costly to upgrade, it’s definitely more preferable to bleeding cash and being vulnerable to malicious agents at the same time. Compliance teams will do well to slowly shift from a linear, case-to-case approach to one that depends on real-time, three-dimensional analytics. And this is where graph analytics solutions come in.

What Graph Analytics Can Do for Your Bank’s AML Program

When the rules have been in place for so long, the most enterprising financial criminals may have already learned the many ways to skirt them. It’s time for even the smaller banks to invest in innovative new systems that can stump criminals and their large web of associates.

This is exactly what graph analytics will achieve. Graph analytics will illustrate, in a highly visual manner, the potential relationships that entities have with each other. In a nutshell, a graph analytics-based solution will utilize the power of certain types of data to uncover complete pictures of customer behavior.

A graph analytics-based solution will use data points or nodes to represent individual customers, and edges to represent potential relationships they have with each other. These relationships can be based on factors like customers’ IP addresses, their country of origin, or the eerily consistent amount of money that they move from their account on a regular basis. The solution can streamline data found from data lakes, disparate files using programs like Microsoft Excel, and third-party applications like those that track international media. A critical difference between a graph analytics AML solution and one that relies on case-by-case tracking is the inability of the latter to expose complex webs of behavior, as well as real-time spikes during certain periods.

After the graphs are generated and analyzed, the bank can use the technology to conduct further research such as whether the data ties back to a list of politically exposed persons or sanctioned entities abroad. Both the bank’s compliance team and its partner investigator can catch trends as they happen, and they can act quickly if there’s significant evidence of criminal behavior. This will cast the bank in a good light when it’s time for regulatory reporting, as regulators will see for themselves that the bank’s AML program is working.

In summary, graph analytics can help a bank like yours detect the threats that may be lurking within your system. It will allow you to track down financial criminals using up-to-date data and, more importantly, a system that works with visual and real-time logic.

For sure, you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a situation where the criminals are more flexible than your own AML staff and system. To avoid that, deprive the money launderers, terrorist backers, and other malicious agents of the luxury of being invisible. Expose incriminating patterns of behavior through an AML solution that utilizes graph analytics, and remain more than one step ahead of the game.

While it is not known to many, the truth is that being unemployed doesn’t hurt your CIBIL or other credit scores directly. Unemployment may hamper your income stream, but it is not a directly perceived criterion in your credit report. However, just because your credit score is not directly affected by unemployment, it doesn’t mean that it will have no impact on your financials and credit history.

Here are a few direct ways that unemployment can hurt your score and credit borrowing capacity in general:

1. Delay in bill payment

If you are unemployed, it could become difficult to manage household expenses, house bills and pay credit card bills on time. This could lead to late or missed payments altogether, which will invariably end up affecting your credit borrowing capacity.

2. Loans for unemployed individuals

Lenders and financial institutions do offer loans for unemployed people who are unemployed. In most cases it would be a secure loan i.e., the loan applicant will have to provide security or collateral to get that loan. This could also mean further dilution of assets if the loan is not paid on time and have a terrible impact on your credit history too.

3. Increased dependency on credit cards

There is a chance that you might start relying more on your credit cards to pay bills and clear other expenses, which will heighten your Credit Utilisation Ratio (CUR). This ratio combines your revolving account balance from all your credit cards and other lines of credit you may have availed of and your credit limits. A higher CUR ratio will lead to a more significant impact on your credit scores.

4. Multiple card dependency

If the credit card limit of your current card doesn’t suffice, you will end up applying for more and that will only lead to creating a bigger debt for you. This will also affect your credit score gravely.

Unsecured Loans for Employed

Yes, you heard that right. There are a few financial institutions out there that offer you a personal loan, which is an unsecured loan i.e., you do not have to provide any collateral or security to avail of it. Granted that the personal loans tenure and rate of interest would be different for income earners and unemployed people, but it will still get you financing in time.

Apart from not needing to offer collateral, you may also not have to produce a co-signer if you are applying for a personal loan with some lending institutions. However, you can do a free check of CIBIL score before applying for one as lenders may be willing to offer loans to people with a lower CIBIL score, but they do not entirely ignore it either.

In Conclusion:

Remember always to check your credit score and CIBIL score to understand your credit position in time to rectify it. If you want to calculate your credit score i.e., do a free check of CIBIL score, then Finserv MARKETS can help you check your score in no time. Additionally, you can also learn about different ways to help increase your score and the criteria that different lenders have for loan applicants.

There are several important steps to learn exactly how reverse mortgages work on residential homes. Reverse mortgages are becoming increasingly popular amongst senior homeowners with equity in their property. These financial solutions allow property owners to stay in their homes, eliminate tax payments, and provide options to heirs. As a homeowner over the age of 62, consider a reverse mortgage to supplement your income and pay for unforeseen expenses. This way, you can secure your retirement and stay protected against exceeding balances. To help you get started, read on to learn how reverse mortgages work for residential homes.

Determine Best Type Of Loan

First off, determine the best type of reverse mortgage for your residential home. There are three main types of reverse mortgages. For example, single-purpose reverse mortgages are offered by municipal, state, and nonprofit business agencies. Typically, this is the most cost-effective approach to obtain a loan. Next, you may want to consider a home equity conversion mortgage. HECMs are federally-insured by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. The third type of financial solution is a proprietary reverse mortgage, which is often used for high-value homes that require larger advances. Surely, determine the best types of reverse mortgage to build supplemental income from your residential home.

Estimate How Much You Are Eligible For

Next, estimate how much you will be eligible for with your residential reverse mortgage. One of the most accurate ways to determine how much you can receive is by using online reverse mortgage calculation tools. Using a reverse mortgage calculator, simply input your property value, existing mortgage amount, and area code. Then, enter basic details like your date of birth and marital status. With this data, calculators can gather accurate data regarding eligibility, mortgage balance, and closing costs. They can provide you reliable information regarding payment methods, such as lines of credit or tenure payment plans. Some advanced calculation tools even deliver instant information about fixed and adjustable interest rates. Certainly, estimate reverse mortgage potential amounts to acquire a loan on your residential home.

Ensure You Meet Requirements

In addition, you will need to ensure you meet the requirements for reverse mortgages on residential homes. To qualify for a reverse mortgage, you must first own your property outright or posses a financial lien that you are allowed to borrow against. In addition, most loan brokers require you to live in your home, maintain the property, and maintain its condition. Some eligibility requirements are even based on your home’s architectural style and configuration. For example, you will likely need to have a multi-unit home with less than five apartments or a single-family property in order to qualify. Of course, you may also be eligible with a townhouse, condominium, or recently-built manufactured home. Indeed, ensure that you meet the requirements to obtain a reverse mortgage on your residential home.

Compare Fees And Costs

Now, you are ready to compare fees and costs on your reverse mortgage loan. Shop around to compare the expenses and rates on the best available loan. Specifically, focus on closing costs, interest rates, and origination costs. Simultaneously, take a careful look at processing and service fees. Of course, these vary widely amongst different lenders. Analyzing fee structure, you can have a clearer understanding of the total costs for your reverse mortgage. Naturally, this will help you better understand your payback period and ideal course of action. Absolutely, comparing fees and costs is an important step to learn how reverse mortgages work for residential properties.

Use Your Obtained Funds

After you received your first reverse mortgage payment, it is time to start using your obtained funds. Many seniors use their reverse mortgage income to consolidate debts, perform home improvements, and create an emergency fund. In addition, use this capital to purchase a new property, secure your home equity, and increase your net worth. Simultaneously, you can accomplish several vital responsibilities with your new sustainable income. For example, you may want to pay off property taxes or homeowner’s insurance. Definitely, use your obtained funds to learn how reverse mortgages work on your residential home.

There are several important steps to learn how reverse mortgages work on residential homes. First off, learn about the different type of reverse mortgage loans available. Next, estimate how much you are eligible for using a reverse mortgage calculator tool. In addition, ensure that you meet the requirements from a loan broker. Now, you are ready to compare fees and costs associated with these financial solutions. Afterwards, use your obtained funds to support a comfortable financial lifestyle. Follow the points highlighted above to learn how reverse mortgages work for residential homes.