Your Banker Doesn’t Make the Decision

Ever heard of too many chefs in the kitchen? You know how it goes. There’s a bit of chaos, too many people involved in making decisions.

In a perfect world you’d get your credit decision very quickly. From your Banker.  You have all your relationships there, with your Banker.  You believe they know everything about you and your business there is to know because of those relationships.  And you’ve been a loyal customer for many years.

So when you find yourself growing your business and suddenly needing working capital to fuel that growth, your first instinct is to contact your Banker.  Because of the relationships. And, knowing the value of your relationships you truly believe your Banker can give your financing request prompt consideration and a quick decision, yes, or no, on the application you’ve submitted. In the banking lingo it’s called a “credit decision.”

A decision based on the entire credit profile—income, cash flow, business plans, credit, debt, etc.—to either approve your financing request or to deny your request. After all, your time is very valuable and your business is growing; you don’t have time to waste if a credit decision isn’t going to go your way.

But there’s an entire system at the bank where it’s out of the hands of your Banker to make that quick credit decision.  There are Underwriters and processing staff involved to review your credit profile, to compile notes and compare everything against the Bank’s guidelines for lending.

And still you wonder, “What about my relationship?”  Yes, your Banker is your go-to person who have been so valuable to you as you’ve grown your business to this point, guiding you with the right accounts and products.  So, why can’t your Banker give your loan request the once-over and tell you, honestly, and based on your longstanding relationship and the bank’s guidelines, if the request will result in a “Yes” or a “No?”

The answer is simple.  Your Banker is not permitted to make credit decisions.  Any of them. Your Banker wants to help you, wants to maintain the worthiness of your relationships.  But your Banker’s hands are tied because she is not permitted to make credit-decisions on behalf of the Bank.

Your Loan Application must go through the system.  Later, if the system fails you or doesn’t meet your expectations, even if you are approved for the financing, you may want to blame your Banker and ask, “Why couldn’t they tell me this from the beginning and not waste my time?”  

Because they can’t, that’s why. Telling you from the beginning qualifies as a credit decision, and that’s out of their hands.

Two Most Important Documents

There are two documents that are the most important documents that you should include and have ready for immediate access whenever applying for financing.

First and foremost, your current Year-To-Date (YTD) Income Statement. At Aurora Business Consulting, we believe you should be updating your YTD Income Statement every quarter, but it couldn’t hurt to update it every month. With automated bookkeeping software, creating a quick YTD Income Statement should be easy to accomplish.

The second important document to have at the ready is a comprehensive marketing plan. We don’t mean a one or two page marketing statement.  A comprehensive marketing plan with a full assessment of your marketing action plan, including specific strategies, Situational Analysis, demographics, SWOT analysis and cost analysis and expected outcomes is the recommended document to have at the ready.

Realistically your marketing plan should already be in place as a foundational element of your business operations.  In the event you need to apply for financing, and if there are changes to your marketing plan, you need only update the plan accordingly.  Especially if the financing request involves working capital for marketing expenses, or equipment purchases for the potential increased business revenues generated by your new marketing vision.

Why a marketing plan when you’re applying for financing? You know your objectives on maintaining and growing your business; the lender wants to know your objectives also.

With these two important documents, when you present the marketing plan and the income statement promptly and efficiently, it says something about your way of conducting business. You’re sending a clear signal to the Lender about the high quality methods you use to run your business; you’re giving the Lender a sense of “comfort” about the risk assessment on your financing request.

What if your financials are weak in certain areas for the last couple of years? The Marketing Plan also could potentially overcome some objections the lender has to something that’s weak in your financials.

The marketing plan shows the way you’re going to increase revenue either by something you’re doing already or something you plan to do which is why you’re applying for working capital or equipment capital.

Streamline Your Financing Request

Want to become a priority with the banker?

Summarizing your financing package can help to prioritize how your banker reviews your financing request.

We recently submitted a client’s financing request to one of the Lenders on our lending matrix.  Our Lender Rep. said, “Holy cow, you guys are on top of it with your summary. Not many brokers make it this easy to review the package.”

We made it easy because the client provided us with their financials. The financials were comprehensive. It’s a multi-million dollar corporation and we’re at the early stage of presenting to the lender. We want to show something that’s easily digestible. We want to ease  the process for the lender to give us a prompt review and tell us their interest in offering the financing.

Summarizing your financials is easy to do.  When you have a lot of line items that lead up to one, just one, type of deduction or one type of income source, simply summarize it. Drop it down to as few lines as possible so the lender can do a quick review and say,  “Okay, I see the picture here.”

The Lender doesn’t need to know the granular line by line details at this early stage; you want the Lender to give a fast review to gauge their interest. If the Lender expresses interest and offers a Letter of Intent for the financing, you can present the more detailed financials with your full loan application package.

For each financing request, present a one or two page statement describing the background of the business, the reason for their financing request, and, in bold, large font, the amount of our financing request.

Our presentation package for the initial Lender review is compact yet complete.  The “first glimpse” by a Lender is sufficient to tell us if that particular Lender is the right fit for our client’s request, or if we need to locate a different Lender.

Visit our Financing Fodder YouTube Playlist on how to prepare your business loan request.

Lessons, Lenders, Decisions and Documents

Lessons with Lenders and Decision with Documents

When we locate the right Lender to provide a financing solution for your capital needs, the Lender requests documents as part of the application process.  We prefer to collect and review as many documents as possible early in our qualifying process.

We review each document you submit.  We do this to determine your business’ qualifications for the different financing products available through our matrix of Lenders.  But we also review your documents to look for any issues that might arise in the financing request and to resolve those issues before we submit your request to a Lender. Not all Lenders require all these documents, and occasionally we prefer to submit certain documents only after a detailed conversation with a Lender.

The definition of a successful Loan Application is the approval you want, the approval you need, and the approval that meets your timeline.

Early on in our long experience working in the financial services industry, we learned the lessons of successful applications:

Lesson 1: The Application can make or break the deal.  The Application is the source of all information and, ultimately, the guidepost for processing and Underwriting.  The more complete and accurate an Application, the better the Underwriting RESULT.  That RESULT is not only an approval, but a timely one.  The complete Application typically anticipates the Underwriter’s thinking and answers questions before they’re asked.

Lesson 2: It’s all about the paper.  Yes, even in the 21st Century (is it time yet to say, “Beam me up, Scotty?”), you have to support your Application with documents.

Lesson 3: The front-loader.  When you submit your Application with a complete basic set of documents at the onset, your process moves much quicker along to the goal line.

Lesson 4: Give ’em what they need, not what they want. Many times a Lender and/or Underwriter will ask for more documents than are necessary.  We’ve learned time and again to push-back on certain documents requests.  Often, we’ll ask the Underwriter for a valid reason for the document request.  Piling more documents into the Application package simply because they “want it” slows down your approval timeline.  You’d be surprised with how many times a requested document isn’t actually needed for the loan approval.

Lesson 5: Garbage in, garbage out.  A single document, presented incorrectly, can torpedo your financing request.  At the very least, a document that presents a challenge to the loan approval process should be presented with an accurate explanation, whether the document provides a positive or negative aspect to the entirety of the Application.  We learned long ago the value of the phrase, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Lesson 6: Underwriting is Subjective.  Underwriting is more a subjective than an objective process. You want your Application to move quickly through the system for one important reason: don’t give the Underwriter time to develop a dislike for your Application.  When an Underwriter can move efficiently and quickly through a Loan Application, they don’t have time to develop negative opinions about the Application. The lingering-loan-application simply provides an Underwriter with more time to excessively scrutinize details that may not really be negative, but can develop into a negative aspect in the Underwriter’s subjective way of thinking.  You know, they’re human too.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel and check out our video on DIY your Business Loan Application.

Visit our Financing Fodder YouTube Playlist for more information on how to prepare yourself when requesting a business loan.

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The Right Conversation

Too often, business owners have preconceived notions about financing their businesses, whether it’s for a commercial mortgage or credit financing. These ideas arise out of common perceptions about how traditional lenders make credit financing decisions.

And then they speak with their banker. We’ve already discussed the idea that your banker is very often a “gatekeeper” with the “keys to the vault.”  For a business owner, gaining access to the money in the vault can be a daunting process, and that initial conversation with the banker proves out this theory, especially with reinforcing those preconceived notions.

The truth is this: having a conversation, the right conversation, with someone who has your business’ best interests at heart can lead to a different result. That result can be financing the business owner needs to move forward and continue to build their business.

The right conversation with a broker who is working for you and not working for the lender will very quickly wipe away those preconceived notions.

Credit is one of those conversations. The concept that credit must be a very high score with impeccable payment histories is an idea that can be changed with the right conversation. Because there are lenders out there, non-traditional lenders, who have a more forgiving attitude towards credit blemishes.

Same with income tax returns and the dreaded “bottom line” income. Traditional lenders use a decidedly more rigid approach to income-qualifying. That rigid approach can lead to a denial of your loan request.

The right conversation with a broker who has the ability and who works with both traditional and non-traditional lenders will simply assist to “translate” the true income-producing potential of your business that will lead to a positive result.

Visit our Financing Fodder YouTube Playlist for more information on how to prepare yourself when requesting a business loan.