Introducing Business Closures Data

Update: Since this post's original publication, Enigma has retired the Business Closures attribute. We have since introduced the Transactions Stability attribute, which can also be used to identify closed businesses.

What kind of signal does Enigma Business Closures Data provide?

Business Closures data is a leading indicator of business risk or distress. Since the data reveals whether or not a business is operating week to week, this is going to be an early signal that a business may be at risk.

What makes Business Closures data unique?

There are three key factors:

1. Timeliness: It takes a credit bureau data anywhere between 1-3 months to let you know if a business is in distress. This latency increases your risk exposure and prevents any kind of proactive intervention. In contrast, Enigma Business Closures data captures the operating statuses of businesses in near real time, ensuring you’re rapidly alerted to any new closed businesses.
2. Diversity of sources: Since data on small businesses isn’t easy to find, Enigma Business Closures spans across a wide range of online sources, including local news websites and online business listings. We also include data from a number of third-party providers.
3. Transparency: We want to share the sources that indicate closure directly with you so you can verify these predictions. We strive to reduce the black-box nature of machine learning as much as possible.

How does Enigma model this data?

Enigma has trained a number of natural language processing (NLP) models to detect indicators of a business’s permanent closure across online and third-party data sources. Each week we analyze a variety of sources to get the most up-to-date and accurate operating status for each business.

How are organizations using this data?

Business Closures data has proven to be essential for portfolio risk monitoring, particularly during this period of economic volatility caused by COVID-19. Our customers are using this data to flag any businesses within their portfolios that transition to a “closed” operating status. With this data, financial institutions can react to potentially at-risk businesses more quickly and confidently monitor their overall risk exposure.

Marketing teams have also leveraged Business Closures data to increase campaign ROI by cleaning prospect lists and ensuring they’re only targeting open businesses.

If you’d like to learn more about our Business Closures data, you can try it for free via our API, or get in touch to request a demo.