On 7 August 2015 Charles Thorburn announced the former CreditSquare’s revised quarterly index, Activity and Availability of Credit (AAC). Its publications now distinguished the credit activity taking place from the availability of credit to UK SMEs. The previous series had described demand and supply. The change in definitions matters when reading quarters on either side of 2014.
Q1 2015 in the revised series
| Quarter | Credit activity | Credit availability |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 2015 | 77.8 | 72.2 |
Each reading was above the neutral score of 50. The numbers were indicators of direction, not pounds of lending or individual approval odds. Activity could reflect decisions made by borrowers as well as by lenders. Availability could therefore improve without an equivalent increase in loans being taken up.
The second-quarter release shows why the distinction mattered. Elevated availability coincided with a much smaller expansion in activity. For the earlier definitions, read the 2014 launch.
Sources and further reading
- Historical CreditSquare page (Wayback Machine) — checked 2026-11-08