GDP data is rising, headlines speak of recovery, and there are more orders in the offices than last year. Everything seems to be going well. But many financial executives, when closing the quarter, find themselves facing an uncomfortable paradox: they invoice more and earn less. Welcome to deceptive growth, one of the most sophisticated traps that the economy can set for those who do not look beyond the sales figures.
Spain has several quarters of positive macroeconomic data, but that optimistic headline hides a much more heterogeneous reality. Companies in sectors such as distribution, auxiliary industry, or services to SMEs are absorbing cost inflation without being able to pass it on entirely to the customer. The result: shrinking margins, strained cash flow, and a customer portfolio that, without anyone consciously deciding, is becoming increasingly risky. Agencia Exclusiva, from the company Crédito y Caución, VG Seguros de Crédito, has been warning its clients about this scenario for some time: the problem is not selling less, but not knowing who you are selling to.
The mirage of big numbers
When the INE publishes GDP growth, that percentage aggregates very different realities. Banking, energy, and telecommunications are sectors with structurally high margins, pricing power, and, in many cases, record profits. Just because the IBEX rises does not mean that the industrial hardware store in Talavera de la Reina is having its best moment. However, both realities fit into the same headline.
This distortion is not new, but it is particularly dangerous in a cycle like the current one, where inflation has inflated the nominal billing figures of almost all companies. A company that sold one million in 2021 and sells 1.2 million in 2024 has not necessarily grown: it may be selling the same, with higher costs and worse margins. The number has grown. The company, not so much.
More billing, more risk
The increase in business volume almost automatically brings an increase in the commercial credit granted. If you used to sell with a 30-day payment term and now, to retain the customer, you accept 60 or 90 days, your exposure has doubled or tripled without anyone signing a financing contract. And if that customer is also facing difficulties that you are not yet aware of, you are building a problem on top of a problem.
This is precisely the mechanism by which growth becomes deceptive: companies passively assume more credit risk as a side effect of wanting to maintain their market share in a competitive environment. The analysis of business risk of the customer portfolio becomes, in this context, a survival tool, not a luxury for large corporations.
The delinquency that comes slowly
One of the clearest symptoms of this environment is the rise in business delinquency. We are not talking about massive defaults or a typical financial crisis, but something quieter: lengthening payment terms, invoices that are paid partially, bankruptcy proceedings that arrive when it is already too late for the supplier.
Data from the Bank of Spain and reports from specialised entities have been indicating a progressive deterioration in the credit quality of certain sectors for months. Construction, hospitality, and retail concentrate a good part of the cases in debt collection management. But the contagion extends to their suppliers, who often lack the resources or systems to detect in time that a customer is becoming insolvent.
The role of information and continuous monitoring
This is where it makes sense to talk about specific tools. Commercial reports from suppliers such as Informa, Iberinform, or Axesor allow you to know a company's payment behaviour before granting credit, or continuously once they are already a client. Monitoring the portfolio is not paranoia: it is management.
Likewise, credit insurance offered by insurers like Crédito y Caución, CESCE, Coface, or Solunion is not just a compensation mechanism when someone does not pay. It is, above all, an early warning system and access to information that would otherwise be inaccessible to a medium-sized company. Knowing that your client has an amber light before you notice it in your current account has incalculable value.
Growing well or growing poorly
The difference between healthy growth and one that ends in provisions for insolvency is usually not in the commercial strategy, but in the controls that accompany that strategy. A company can be very good at selling and very bad at managing the risk of those sales, and for a time the euphoria of growth masks the hole. Until it no longer does.
The Spanish business fabric, especially SMEs, still operates with a rather informal credit risk culture. They rely on intuition, grant longer terms to avoid losing the customer, and detect the problem only when there are already three unpaid invoices on the table. Professionalising that management, whether through credit insurance, periodic reports on strategic clients, or consulting advice from specialised firms in this area, is one of the most effective levers to ensure that the growth reflected in the balance sheet is real, and not a sum of accumulated risks with a client name.
The Spanish economy may continue to publish positive data. What business owners cannot continue to do is read that data as if it speaks directly to them. The macro context is the stage, not the script. And on that stage, those who control their customer portfolio have the advantage.
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