https://suneelreddy.com/ Essays, frameworks and weekly editorials on credit risk, fintech, entrepreneurship and building resilient businesses. en Fri, 04 Sep 2026 05:21:52 GMT https://suneelreddy.com/p/stabilizing-the-long-end.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/stabilizing-the-long-end.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Editorial On September 3 the ten-year Treasury yielded 4.78% and the thirty-year 5.25% — the highest the long end has traded since 2023. The instinct is to blame inflation. The instinct is incomplete: the market is pricing supply. https://suneelreddy.com/p/the-second-order.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/the-second-order.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Brand & D2C I run a pet brand. Selling to dogs' humans taught me something no spreadsheet did until I lived it: the first order is marketing, and it usually loses money. The whole business is whether they come back. https://suneelreddy.com/p/what-kills-a-family-business.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/what-kills-a-family-business.html Wed, 02 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Governance I've underwritten hundreds of family businesses. The ones that failed rarely failed on the numbers. They failed on a question nobody wanted to answer: what happens when the founder lets go? https://suneelreddy.com/p/holding-your-price.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/holding-your-price.html Mon, 31 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Product A year ago I argued discounting is the most expensive marketing you'll ever run. Here's the other half of the sentence: the customers who walk over a fair price increase were usually the ones costing you the most to keep. https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-29.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-29.html Sat, 29 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Editorial Warsh refused to give markets a reaction function and moved September hike odds more than the inflation print did; Korea and Brazil read the same risk in opposite directions; Europe's vanishing surplus turned out to be energy, not tariffs; and India opened its wheat trade because the silos are full — four disagreements in one week. https://suneelreddy.com/p/the-dso-illusion.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/the-dso-illusion.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk Two authoritative datasets six weeks apart say opposite things about payment behaviour. Both are right. The reconciliation explains why aggregate DSO is structurally incapable of seeing a supply-chain shock — and what to measure instead. https://suneelreddy.com/p/character-over-skill.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/character-over-skill.html Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Leadership Skill gets you in the room; character decides whether I'd build anything with you. Why attitude and integrity beat a shiny résumé. https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-22.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-22.html Sat, 22 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Editorial Treasury doubled its long-bond buybacks the same day the Fed minutes showed a bloc ready to hike — and the deeper cost isn't a breach of independence, it's the information content of the 30-year yield itself. https://suneelreddy.com/p/risk-based-pricing-raroc.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/risk-based-pricing-raroc.html Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk Why two borrowers with the same rating pay different rates. A component-by-component construction of a loan price — cost of funds, expected loss, capital charge, operating cost, target return — and the RAROC test that decides whether the deal is worth doing. https://suneelreddy.com/p/boring-businesses.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/boring-businesses.html Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Entrepreneurship Pet snacks, physiotherapy, chasing invoices, a salon. On paper my portfolio is aggressively unglamorous — and that's the strategy. https://suneelreddy.com/p/margins-by-design.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/margins-by-design.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Entrepreneurship Plenty of businesses make money. The question is why. Does this produce healthy margins by design — or only if everything goes right? https://suneelreddy.com/p/invisible-borrower-guide.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/invisible-borrower-guide.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk India has a credit paradox: the money exists, but 86% of MSMEs can't reach it. A practitioner's guide to seeing — and underwriting — the invisible borrower. https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-15.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-15.html Sat, 15 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Editorial Big Tech's leverage ratios say these are the safest borrowers alive. The AI build-out is being financed through leases and SPVs those ratios never touch. https://suneelreddy.com/p/ai-leverage.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/ai-leverage.html Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Entrepreneurship A decade ago, running four businesses needed four teams. Here's what AI actually hands a lean operator — and what it must never touch. https://suneelreddy.com/p/talk-to-customers.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/talk-to-customers.html Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Product It's the step founders skip most — because they're quietly afraid of the answer. Here's how to do it well. https://suneelreddy.com/p/bet-that-failed.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/bet-that-failed.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Entrepreneurship I've spent a career underwriting other people's risk. The costliest mistake I ever made was mis-underwriting my own. https://suneelreddy.com/p/b2b-credit-part1-granting-terms.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/b2b-credit-part1-granting-terms.html Sun, 09 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk Part I of three. Trade credit is the largest unsecured lending market in the world and most of it is granted by sales teams. How to build a credit policy, score a buyer, set a limit, and price risk in days rather than basis points. https://suneelreddy.com/p/b2b-credit-part2-monitoring.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/b2b-credit-part2-monitoring.html Sun, 09 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk Part II of three. The metrics that actually measure a receivables book — aging, DSO vs Best Possible DSO, CEI, ADD, roll rates — plus the behavioural signals that predict which customer stops paying next. https://suneelreddy.com/p/b2b-credit-part3-collections.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/b2b-credit-part3-collections.html Sun, 09 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk Part III of three. A segmented dunning strategy, the dispute machine that quietly funds late payment, the escalation ladder from reminder to legal, and how it all lands in the cash conversion cycle. https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-08.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-08.html Sat, 08 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Editorial US payrolls fell 23,000 in July while the jobless rate improved — and 103,000 jobs vanished from months already decided on. The revision is the real risk. https://suneelreddy.com/p/ai-in-credit.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/ai-in-credit.html Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk AI is overdue for the mechanical 95% of lending. Credit is the 5% that breaks the rules — and that's where its limits show. https://suneelreddy.com/p/bootstrapping-trade.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/bootstrapping-trade.html Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Entrepreneurship Bootstrapping isn't a badge of honour — it's a trade. Here's what it gives you, what it costs, and the one question to ask before raising. https://suneelreddy.com/p/redflag-scan.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/redflag-scan.html Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Forensic & Audit Before you reach for Beneish or Altman, five habits let an experienced reader feel the discomfort in a set of accounts in about ten minutes. https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-01.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/editorial-2026-08-01.html Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Editorial The Fed held rates steady this week and the 30-year yield climbed toward 2007 highs anyway — a repricing of the institution, not the economy. https://suneelreddy.com/p/real-bottleneck.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/real-bottleneck.html Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Operations The loudest problem in your business is almost never the one holding it back — and improving anything except the real constraint just makes the queue neater. https://suneelreddy.com/p/dashboard-story.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/dashboard-story.html Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Data & Strategy A chart isn't a photograph of your business — it's an argument built from a dozen invisible judgement calls, starting with the denominator. https://suneelreddy.com/p/exchange-rates-sovereign-b2b-credit.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/exchange-rates-sovereign-b2b-credit.html Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk From the interbank market and the 4pm Fix to FBIL's ₹/$ reference rate, NEER/REER and parity conditions — then the transmission: how a moving currency reprices sovereign ratings, trade credit and every unhedged balance sheet. https://suneelreddy.com/p/health-taboo.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/health-taboo.html Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Healthcare The most common conditions often go untreated not because they're hard to fix, but because no one will say them out loud — and silence has a cost. https://suneelreddy.com/p/feedback-sandwich.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/feedback-sandwich.html Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Leadership Softening every hard message trains your best people to discount your praise — why direct-but-kind feedback is the real respect. https://suneelreddy.com/p/early-warning-systems-msme-lending.html https://suneelreddy.com/p/early-warning-systems-msme-lending.html Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Credit & Risk How lenders detect borrower stress long before the missed payment — SMA ladders, signal design across banking, GST and bureau feeds, ML-based EWS, trigger playbooks, and the feedback into ECL provisioning.