Credit quality has long decided who gets funded and who doesn’t. Information quality is now drawing that same line in corporate borrowing and working capital.
As private credit becomes a larger source of corporate capital, lenders can negotiate for something public investors generally cannot: recurring access to detailed operating information. Cash forecasts, customer-payment behavior, borrowing-base data, collateral performance and liquidity positions, as a result, are moving beyond internal management tools and become inputs into an ongoing underwriting relationship.
That changes the financing equation for the office of the chief financial officer. A company capable of producing trustworthy, granular and current financial information can potentially give lenders greater confidence about what is happening between reporting periods. A company that can’t could leave creditors underwriting uncertainty instead.
And the timing matters. Stress is becoming harder to ignore across parts of private credit. Recent reporting points to rising defaults, asset markdowns and investor outflows, while the U.S. private credit default rate reportedly reached 6.1% last month. When lenders’ own investors start asking harder questions about portfolio quality, lenders have an incentive to ask borrowers harder questions first.
Read more: Working Capital Is Becoming a Priced Portfolio for CFOs
Private Credit Can Ask What Public Markets Aren’t Able To
Public company reporting is designed around standardized disclosure. That standardization is a feature: investors receive information according to common rules rather than negotiating individual access to a company’s finance department.
In May, the SEC proposed allowing public companies to choose semiannual reporting instead of quarterly Form 10-Q filings. Companies electing the option would file one Form 10-S and one annual report each year rather than three quarterly reports and an annual report. The proposal would not prevent companies from continuing quarterly earnings releases or calls, but it could reduce the frequency of standardized mandatory interim filings for companies that opt in.
Private credit operates differently. A lender extending hundreds of millions of dollars to a company can negotiate information rights as part of the financing relationship. Depending on the agreement, that can create a much closer view of the borrower’s operating condition than periodic public reporting provides.
That creates an unusual possibility: public reporting could become less frequent or less uniform at the same time private capital demands more frequent and more bespoke information. The result would not necessarily be less corporate transparency overall. It could instead mean that transparency becomes increasingly segmented by audience.
PYMNTS Intelligence data found that 4 in 5 middle-market firms using external working capital solutions freed an average of $19 million in 2025, money redirected toward supplier relationships and growth rather than held in reserve. That discipline extends inside the business too. Companies that accelerate receivables, improve inventory visibility and manage supplier payments strategically are not merely polishing their balance sheets. They are increasing the number of choices available to management.
Read more: The Corporate Bank Account Is Becoming an Event Stream
Treasury Data Becomes Part of the Underwriting System
The traditional mental model of corporate borrowing is episodic. A company approaches lenders, provides financial information, negotiates terms, receives capital and then complies with reporting requirements and covenants.
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CFOs have traditionally justified better treasury and accounting data through productivity, forecast accuracy, faster closes and improved decision-making. Those benefits remain. But private credit introduces another potential return: financing optionality.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Time to Cash™: A New Measure of Business Resilience” found in October that 77.9% of CFOs see improving the cash flow cycle as “very or extremely important” to their strategy in the year ahead.
Consider two otherwise comparable borrowers. One can produce a reliable 13-week cash forecast, current customer-payment trends, detailed receivables information and an explainable liquidity position quickly. The other requires several days of spreadsheet assembly and reconciliation before management can confidently answer the same questions.
The distinction used to look primarily operational. To a lender trying to understand downside risk, it can look financial. Information latency becomes another form of uncertainty. And uncertainty has a price.
Read also: The $100 Million CFO Doesn’t Keep Score. They Call the Plays.
Of course, there is another side to that bargain. If better information earns companies access to private capital, CFOs must decide how much information they are prepared to provide in exchange. How close to the operating heartbeat of the company should an outside capital provider be allowed to sit?
The answer is unlikely to be simply “as close as possible.”
A public company’s lenders may receive detailed information about cash forecasts, customer behavior or collateral that ordinary shareholders do not see. There are established legal and contractual frameworks governing lender information, confidentiality and material nonpublic information, but the strategic question for finance leaders is broader.
The SEC’s reporting proposals underscore the contrast. Regulators are considering giving public companies greater flexibility over the cadence and burden of standardized reporting, partly on the premise that companies and investors should have more discretion in determining the appropriate frequency. At the same time, private lenders have strong economic reasons to seek more visibility when credit conditions deteriorate.
That creates two parallel information markets around the same corporation.
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