D‑U‑N‑S Number
What Is a D‑U‑N‑S Number?
What a D‑U‑N‑S Number Is and How It Can Help You
The D‑U‑N‑S Number® is a unique nine-digit identifier that links to your Dun & Bradstreet business credit file and is complety separate from your personal identity.
Potential partners, lenders, and suppliers can use it to help evaluate your business's credibility, financial stability, and readiness for collaboration.
A D‑U‑N‑S Number can also help boost your company’s marketplace visibility and credibility, making it easier to reach new markets, find opportunities, and grow in today’s connected world.
A D‑U‑N‑S Number isn't required to operate a business, but it can be used by lenders, potential partners, and creditors to unlock information on your business's financial stability, creditworthiness, compliance to certain standards, and more.
You may be asked to provide your D‑U‑N‑S Number when you:
• Apply for a loan with a financial institution.
• Apply for credit with a business partner.
• Apply to become a vendor or supplier of a company.
• Bid on contracts locally, or even internationally.
Ensuring you have a D‑U‑N‑S number linked to your business profile can help you tell you deliver a complete and more accurate story to organizations that are looking to do business with you.
While having a D‑U‑N‑S Number is not required for doing business, it may help legitimize your company in the eyes of potential partners, lenders, creditors, and more.
The D‑U‑N‑S Number can be used for more than just credibility checks. For example, many companies use it to evaluate risk and assess supply chain stability. Using D‑U‑N‑S Numbers, they can gain a clearer picture their suppliers' partners, vendors, and even sub-contractors to identify potential vulnerabilities.
Companies that need to meet specific Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), or diversity compliance standards may also begin their inquiries with a D‑U‑N‑S Number.
Does your company have a D‑U‑N‑S Number? Use our D‑U‑N‑S Number Lookup tool to find out.
Dun & Bradstreet maintains business credit files on over 600 million global businesses, each of which is subject to rigorous data governance standards.
Because of our reputation for world-class data, many businesses and national government agencies turn to Dun & Bradstreet first when searching for business information. Your D‑U‑N‑S Number is one way they can access detailed information about your company down to the branch or subsidiary level.
While partnership applications and credit applications are the two places most people first see a request to provide a D‑U‑N‑S Number, those are not the only ways your number can be used.
Each year brings another uptick in worldwide fraud allegations. Understanding the beneficial ownership of all your business partners can help you avoid potentially fraudulent situations. Because of its universal recognition and unique assignment, the D‑U‑N‑S Number can also serve as a primary data key within an organization's Master Data Management architecture. Headquarters, branches, and subsidiaries can all be uniquely identified and tracked.
A D‑U‑N‑S Number can help you establish legitimacy, build credibility, and unlock growth opportunities. Use it to view your business profile, make changes, and strategize how you to make your business a better candidate for credit, contracts, or partnerships.
Get a D‑U‑N‑S Number
Your business may or may not have already had a D‑U‑N‑S Number assigned to it. If not, you can Get a D‑U‑N‑S Number for your business here.
Manage Your Business Information
Seek to Manage your Company’s business information to make sure that your basic information (address, phone numbers, etc.) is up to date.
What’s Next?
Your D‑U‑N‑S Number is used as the starting point for your company’s Live Business Identity, the most comprehensive and continually updated view of any company in the data cloud. Your business credit file is a living record of your business that will change as your business changes.
Once you have established your Live Business Identity, the next step is to work to grow and improve it. Dun & Bradstreet offers products that can help you monitor your business credit, and gain exposure for your company through your Company Profile on the Dun & Bradstreet Business Directory.
D‑U‑N‑S FAQs
No business is required to have a D‑U‑N‑S Number to operate, but you may find that it can help you achieve your business goals. For example, if you want to work with certain companies or agencies, you may need to submit a D‑U‑N‑S Number. It may also be used by financial institutions to access data that helps them evaluate you for a business loan.
D‑U‑N‑S Numbers are free to request. Learn how to get a D‑U‑N‑S Number for your company.
The D‑U‑N‑S Number is used around the world to help identify and access information on businesses. Because the D‑U‑N‑S Number assigned to your business is a unique identifier, other business entities can use it to access firmographic data about your company, like your company’s legal name, entity type, address, phone number, and even branch or subsidiary information.
Your D‑U‑N‑S Number identifies your company business credit file created through Dun & Bradstreet. This credit file may be useful if you want to work for other companies, seek a loan, or win contracts from some governments or government agencies.
Some of the many ways D‑U‑N‑S Numbers may be used include:
- To take the first step in establishing your live business profile
- To meet the requirements of companies you want to do business with
- To look up identifying information on other businesses
- To help when doing due diligence on supply chain links
- To help identify corporate family relationships (headquarters, branches, subsidiaries, etc.)
Having a D‑U‑N‑S Number puts your business in Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Cloud of more than 500 million global businesses. The Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud offers the world’s most comprehensive business data and analytical insights to power today’s most crucial business needs. That’s why 90% of the Fortune 500, and companies of all sizes around the world, rely on Dun & Bradstreet products to help grow and protect their businesses.
By tapping into this Data Cloud, you can:
- Leverage your business profile which can be viewed by potential customers, lenders and partners
- Combine your own customer data with Dun & Bradstreet’s business insights to help target prospective buyers and build personalized advertising campaigns
- Identify opportunities to expand your business
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