Consulting
Contract the experience, not a package.
Most of this site sells defined pieces of work with a fee attached. This page is for the things that do not fit a package: a lender who needs a product structured properly, a brokerage trying to build commercial capability, a board that wants the funding perspective in the room before the decision rather than after it.
What you are contracting
Time on both sides of the desk.
Most people in finance have seen one side of it. Nicholas started as a business banker, assessing and reviewing other people's deals, before moving to broking and then to lending in his own right. The useful part is the sequence: knowing how a credit team decides, then spending years building the files they decide on, then structuring the money itself.
That is the experience being contracted here. Not a methodology, and not a framework.
- Eight years in banking and finance, starting on the lender's side of the desk
- A business banker at Greater Bank, specialising in complex business and trust lending
- Worked on the bank's twenty largest credit exposures, with annual credit reviews, arrears and hardcore debt
- Founder of a private credit division that structures funding conventional lenders will not
- Co-founder of a broker aggregator, and co-director of a broking firm
- Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Justice of the Peace in NSW
Gold Club Elite 2025 · Commercial Broker of the Year finalist 2025 · Multiple MFAA award nominations
Three specialisms
Where the experience is actually worth contracting.
Narrow on purpose. These are the three things worth paying for rather than everything that could be advised on.
Private lender product and credit design
Private lenders, non-banks and family offices deploying credit
A product only works if it works on both sides. Getting the risk, the return and the serviceability to agree is the job.
- Product structure, and whether the terms hold up for the borrower as well as the book
- Credit policy: what you will lend against, at what level, and where the line sits
- Serviceability logic, and how it should be tested rather than assumed
- Tranched and staged funding, structured around before-and-after positions
- Where a deal sits outside conventional criteria, and what structure gets it done
- Pricing for risk without pricing yourself out of the deals you actually want
This is the work behind Andorra Private's private credit division, which builds structures for borrowers conventional lenders cannot move quickly enough for, and advises lenders on products that balance risk, return and serviceability.
Broker business consulting
Brokerages starting out, scaling, or moving beyond residential
Most residential brokers know there is commercial revenue they are not writing. Very few have the process to write it.
- Building genuine commercial and self-employed lending capability, not just accreditation
- The process and systems underneath a broking business that scales past its founder
- Lender panel strategy, and which relationships are worth the effort
- How a file should be built so credit approves it rather than queries it
- What to keep in-house, what to outsource, and where the margin actually is
Nicholas co-founded BrokerSidekick, an aggregator supporting brokers to start and scale, co-directs The Lending Lab, and co-founded Foundation Finance as head of commercial lending. He lodged more than $100m in his first twelve months broking at Aussie.
Advisory board and non-executive seats
Boards of businesses carrying debt or planning a capital move
Most boards have someone who understands the market and someone who understands the numbers. Fewer have someone who understands what a lender will do next.
- A seat on an advisory board or a non-executive appointment
- The capital and funding perspective in the room, before decisions are taken
- Strategy reviewed from a governance angle rather than an operating one
- What the business's debt position will support, and what it will not
- Preparing a board for a raise, a refinance or an acquisition
Nicholas is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, has completed its Foundations of Directorship course, and spent three years on AdvisoryCloud reviewing strategy and working with executive teams from a governance-centric position.
How engagements run
- Every engagement is scoped in writing before it starts. Nothing begins on a handshake and an assumption.
- Work is charged at a negotiated hourly rate, agreed with you in writing along with the scope.
- Tell us what you need and you will have both the scope and the rate within two business days.
- Where a piece of work would be better bought as one of our fixed-fee products, we will say so and quote that instead.
The one exception
There is no rate on this page.
Every other fee on this site is on the page, and this one is not. It is worth saying why. Consulting scope varies too much for a published number to mean anything: a half-day reviewing a credit policy and a three-month product build are not the same engagement, and pretending one rate covers both would be the kind of vagueness this firm exists to avoid. What we will not do is start work before the rate and the scope are agreed with you in writing.
Everything else we do is priced on the site. The full fee schedule covers due diligence, finance documents, business plans and the standing engagements, all with a number against them.
What this is not
- Credit advice, or a recommendation to enter any credit contract
- Legal advice. Nicholas is not a lawyer and does not hold himself out as one
- Financial product advice, or anything touching personal wealth, superannuation or insurance
- Arranging credit. Andorra Advisory Group is not a credit representative
- Accounting, tax, bookkeeping or audit work of any kind
On independence
Consulting to lenders and advising businesses that borrow from them are two things that can pull in opposite directions. Where an engagement would put us on both sides of something, we say so and step back from one of them.
The independence is the product on the rest of this site, and it is not worth trading for a single engagement. Read the full disclosures.
Running a business rather than lending to one?
This page is for lenders, brokerages and boards. If you own and run a business and want someone alongside you on the decisions, that is The Sounding Board, and it is priced on the page like everything else.
Common questions
Because consulting scope varies too much for a published number to be honest. Half a day reviewing a credit policy and a three-month product build are not the same engagement. Every other fee on this site is on the page, and we would rather name this exception than let you notice it. Tell us what you need and you will have a scope and a rate in writing within two business days, before anything starts.
The products are defined pieces of work with a deliverable and a price: a due diligence report, a serviceability model, a business plan. Consulting is contracting the experience itself for something that does not fit a package. If what you actually need is one of the products, we will tell you and quote that instead, because it will be cheaper and faster.
Three groups. Private lenders and non-banks who need a product structured so it works for the borrower as well as the book. Brokerages starting out or trying to build genuine commercial capability. And boards who want the funding and capital perspective in the room before decisions get taken rather than after.
Sometimes, and where that happens it is disclosed in writing. Where a consulting engagement would put us on both sides of something, we say so and step back from one of them. Our independence is the product on the rest of this site and it is not worth trading for an engagement.
Within limits, and the limits matter. We build models, documents and structures, and we advise on how a product or a process should work. We do not arrange credit, we do not provide legal or tax advice, and we do not act as a business agent. Where an engagement runs into any of those, that part goes to someone licensed for it.
A seat rather than a purchase, so it starts with a conversation about the business, the board and whether the fit is real. Typically that is attendance at scheduled meetings, availability between them, and the capital and funding perspective brought into decisions early. Fees for a seat are agreed with the board in the usual way.
Enough to be useful, and less than a full-time hire. This is one person who also runs several businesses, which is precisely why the experience is worth contracting, and also why availability is finite. If a piece of work needs more capacity than is available we will say so at the scoping stage rather than take it and stretch.
Consulting engagements are commercial advisory work, scoped and priced in writing before they begin. They are not credit advice, legal advice or financial product advice. Andorra Advisory Group does not arrange credit and is not a credit representative. Where an engagement requires a licensed adviser, a lawyer or a registered tax agent, we say so and refer it.