Experian Intelliscore Plus

Intelliscore Plus is Experian's flagship commercial risk score, expressed on a 1-100 percentile scale in the classic version (higher is better) and 300-850 in the newer V3, deliberately shaped like a consumer FICO range for familiarity. It predicts the probability of serious delinquency (91+ days past due), charge-off, or business failure within 12 months, using Experian's trade data, public records, collections activity, inquiry patterns, and firmographics.

A distinctive feature is blended scoring: for small businesses with thin commercial files, Experian can incorporate the owner's consumer credit data (with permissible purpose) into a blended commercial-plus-consumer model. Because small-business failure is tightly correlated with owner financial stress, blended scores discriminate meaningfully better on young and small companies than commercial-only data — which is precisely the segment where commercial-only files are thinnest.

As with any bureau score, calibrate it to your own portfolio rather than adopting the vendor's risk bands wholesale. Track how accounts in each score band actually performed in your ledger over a year or two, then set cutoffs and limit tiers from that evidence. And when Experian and D&B disagree materially on the same customer, treat the disagreement as information — the two bureaus see different trade files, and the divergence often means one of them is seeing a problem the other has not yet received.