Audit firms failed to raise the alarm before three-quarters of big UK corporate collapses since 2010, according to research, raising concerns that auditors are failing to perform one of their core functions.

Three in four audit reports failed to provide alerts that companies, which ultimately failed, risked going bankrupt by providing a “material uncertainty related to going concern” in the year before collapse, according to a report published on Monday by the Audit Reform Lab, a think-tank at the University of Sheffield.

Small business owners in the U.S. are struggling to get financing from traditional lenders as the impact of higher rates and bank failures of a year ago linger, holding back business growth for some.

The difficulty in getting more traditional forms of credit shows how sharp interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve, exacerbated by the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last March are reverberating in the economy, say analysts and other industry insiders.

Industry experts talked about payment services regulation in the EU, Central Electronic System of Payment information reporting, instant payments and the Financial Data Access (Fida) framework at an event organised by Luxhub and Allen & Overy in Luxembourg on 18 April, followed by a networking session.