Businesses need financing, and banks need to know whether a given company represents a reasonable risk. The Risk project group (part of De Nederlandsche Bank's Circular Economy Working Group and consisting of experts from Rabobank, ABN AMRO, ING, Triodos and Invest-NL) set out to create a scorecard which would enable financial institutions to establish whether a specifically circular business is a good bet.

They developed a generic, open source tool (the Circular Risk Scorecard, or CRS) for assessing the opportunities and risks of circular businesses. It identifies a business's long-term prospects and collects anonymized data linking circular risks and opportunities to the continuity of circular businesses. The CRS is based on classic risk models but adds factors specific to circular businesses and considers standard factors from the standpoint of circularity.

The CRS is intended to be used by financial institutions for assessing financing as well as for training circular entrepreneurs.

De Nederlandsche Bank provides access to the CRS and a user manual.