Commercial finance
How we actually broker a deal.
Most commercial submissions are a cover letter, a spreadsheet and three years of financials. That is why so many of them come back with questions, or with a decline nobody can explain. This is what we do instead, and it is the reason we do not need to ask your accountant to sign anything.
The work
Five stages, and the first one is free
Nothing is lodged anywhere and no credit file is touched until you say so.
1. We find out whether it is fundable
Before anything is lodged and before any credit file is touched. You send the financials and we tell you what a credit team will see, including when the answer is that it will not go in this shape. That conversation is free and it is often the useful one.
2. We rebuild the earnings
From bank statements, BAS lodgements and the general ledger, not from the vendor's adjusted profit and loss or a summary someone typed up. Every add-back is evidenced line by line, because the ones that are not are the ones that get struck out.
3. We test it the way the lender will
Serviceability modelled at the assessment rate rather than the quoted one, covenants worked against your actual numbers, and the sensitivity run on the levers that move the answer. If it is tight, you find out from us rather than from a credit team.
4. We write the submission and take it to market
A credit paper that a credit team can follow, put in front of the lenders whose policy actually fits the deal. Not every lender, and not the one paying the most. The ones who will do it.
5. We stay for the covenants
Approval is the middle of the job, not the end. The covenants in the letter of offer get tested every quarter for the life of the facility, and most owners never read them until the year they breach one.
Why the file is different
We build the evidence. We do not ask someone else to vouch for it.
There is a version of commercial broking where the submission is thin, the lender asks for comfort, and the broker rings the client’s accountant to ask for a letter confirming the business can service the debt. It works often enough to keep happening. It also puts an accountant’s professional indemnity behind a serviceability model they did not build and cannot see.
We do not work that way. The earnings are rebuilt from source documents, every adjustment carries the evidence a credit team will ask for, and the serviceability is modelled at the assessment rate. The case is made inside the submission, which is where it belongs, and our name is on it. If a lender wants a fact confirmed that only your accountant holds, we say exactly what is being asked and why.
That is possible because of Commercial PowerHub, the lending platform we built in-house rather than working off spreadsheets, because the work we do is not the work an off-the-shelf tool is built for. It rebuilds earnings from source data, models serviceability at the assessment rate rather than the quoted one, tests every covenant in the letter of offer against the actual numbers, runs the sensitivities, and produces the credit paper. The same deal on a spreadsheet takes days and does not reconcile.
It is not a demonstration. It is what the work on this site was done with. The vet practice whose borrowing capacity went from $3.0m to $6.5m, and the self storage purchase a bank had already declined that settled with an additional $3m approved, were both rebuilt on it.
You can check the arithmetic without engaging us. The 18 calculators on this site run the same engines, with the method published in full on every one, free and behind no form. That is unusual and it is deliberate: a firm that will not show you the sums is asking you to take the answer on trust.
What we arrange
Commercial lending, and the honest edge of it.
| Facility | What that covers |
|---|---|
| Acquisition finance | Buying a business or buying into one, including goodwill-heavy deals where the security is thin and the earnings have to carry it. |
| Commercial property | Owner-occupied premises, investment property, and the play where an owner buys their own building outside the business. |
| Refinance and restructure | Facilities taken out years apart, on terms nobody has compared since, consolidated into a structure that reflects the business as it trades now. |
| Working capital and trade | Overdrafts, invoice facilities, stock and trade lines, priced on what they actually cost rather than on the headline rate. |
| Equipment and asset finance | Vehicles, plant and specialised equipment, with the balloon modelled both ways so the lower repayment and the sum still owing are both on the page. |
| Development and construction | Arranged separately through Andorra Private, which is the broking brand set up for it. We will tell you when a deal belongs there. |
Acquisition finance
- What that covers
- Buying a business or buying into one, including goodwill-heavy deals where the security is thin and the earnings have to carry it.
Commercial property
- What that covers
- Owner-occupied premises, investment property, and the play where an owner buys their own building outside the business.
Refinance and restructure
- What that covers
- Facilities taken out years apart, on terms nobody has compared since, consolidated into a structure that reflects the business as it trades now.
Working capital and trade
- What that covers
- Overdrafts, invoice facilities, stock and trade lines, priced on what they actually cost rather than on the headline rate.
Equipment and asset finance
- What that covers
- Vehicles, plant and specialised equipment, with the balloon modelled both ways so the lower repayment and the sum still owing are both on the page.
Development and construction
- What that covers
- Arranged separately through Andorra Private, which is the broking brand set up for it. We will tell you when a deal belongs there.
Who this is for
Businesses trying to get past $10m, and stay there.
There is a stretch of a business’s life where the finance gets hard. Too big for the application a startup fills in, not yet big enough for the relationship banking that comes with scale, and complicated enough that the numbers no longer fit a form. That is the stretch we work in: from the first facility, through the growth years, to the corporate banking relationship on the other side.
We stay through the bad years as well, which is not a line most brokers put on a website. A business under pressure needs finance more than it ever did and finds it hardest to get, so we built a speciality in restructuring and distressed lending, including a product developed alongside private lenders for businesses in or coming out of a Small Business Restructuring.
Where a matter belongs with an insolvency practitioner we say so and work alongside them rather than instead of them.
SBR and restructuring financeHow we are paid
Said plainly, before you ask.
Andorra Advisory Group charges a fixed fee for the analysis and the documents, quoted before the work starts and payable regardless of whether finance is approved or what the analysis concludes. Where a lender pays commission on a facility, it is paid to The Lending Lab Pty Ltd. Commission is not payable on every transaction and the amount is not ascertainable at the time the work is quoted. Both are disclosed in writing at engagement.
The reason the advisory fee is fixed matters more now that we arrange the finance, not less. It means the analysis is paid for whatever it concludes, including when it concludes you should not do the deal. We write a few of those every year, and they are the engagements that make the rest of this worth reading.
Want a straight read on your deal?
Book a free call with Nick. Bring the numbers you have, and we will tell you the right service level and the fixed fee. No obligation.
Common questions
Credit assistance is provided by Nicholas Clunes, Credit Representative Number 530711, authorised under Australian Credit Licence Number 387856, through The Lending Lab Pty Ltd. The analysis and document work is carried out by Andorra Advisory Group. It is one service and one person running it; the two names exist because that is how the authorisation is held.
Andorra charges a fixed fee for the analysis and the documents, quoted before the work starts and payable regardless of whether finance is approved or what the analysis concludes. Where a lender pays commission on a facility, it is paid to The Lending Lab Pty Ltd. Commission is not payable on every transaction and the amount is not ascertainable at the time we quote you. Both are disclosed in writing at engagement.
No. That request is a broker moving their evidence problem onto someone else's professional indemnity, and it is the thing we built the process to avoid. We rebuild the earnings from bank statements, BAS lodgements and the general ledger, evidence every adjustment, and make the case inside the submission. If a lender wants a fact confirmed that only your accountant holds, we tell you and them exactly what is being asked and why.
As many as the deal needs and no more. Shotgunning a submission across a panel produces multiple credit enquiries and a file that looks shopped, which makes the next lender harder rather than easier. We work out whose policy actually fits before anything is lodged, and nothing goes anywhere until you say so.
For the broking, yes: $500,000 with property security, or $1,000,000 without. Below those, the analysis and the documents are still available at the fixed fees on the pricing page and you or your own broker take them to a lender. We would rather tell you that now than in a first meeting.
Then we say so, in writing, and usually early. The first conversation is free precisely so nobody spends money finding out. Where a fixed-fee engagement has already started, the fee is payable and the conclusion is still the conclusion, because a fee that depended on the answer would not be worth having.
Yes, and plenty do. We build the file to the same standard and work directly with whoever lodges it, at the same fee. A long relationship with a banker who knows the business is worth something real, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to win a mandate.
Not through this site. We arrange commercial finance only: credit for business or investment purposes. Home loans, personal loans and anything else regulated by the National Consumer Credit Protection Act are outside what is offered here, and if that is what you need we will say so and point you somewhere sensible. Worth knowing the flip side too: because business-purpose credit sits outside the National Credit Code, the consumer protections that come with a home loan do not come with a commercial facility, and a lender will ask you to sign a business purpose declaration confirming the purpose.