Larger businesses that borrow money by raising share capital automatically have some form of ‘Investor Relations’ person or team. The principle is that they know that they are under scrutiny and that shareholders can just elect to sell shares which could damage their supply of funding. They therefore need to put some effort into communicating with shareholders, keeping them up-to-date, feeding them good news and managing the bad news.
Shouldn’t the same principle now apply to your lenders? They’re your source of funding upon which you may be dependent, you should perhaps no longer take it for granted that loans or overdrafts are going to be continued/renewed – and lenders will be twitchy about bad news.
Many businesses have to provide quarterly figures for their bank anyway as part of monitoring covenants. I know some who see that as a bit of a burden and just send them off (perhaps in the belief that they don’t really get looked at – not least as you don’t always get feedback on them). Should that be an exercise that you put a bit more effort into?
By sending these figures off without a commentary you are relying on the bank to analysis and interprete them as they see fit. My recommendation is that you provide a kind of up-date report with such submissions – so that you control the communication. Why leave it to chance?
For those with less intense contact with the bank the same does still apply to when you share your annual accounts with them.