Practice
Structured credit
Banks do not refuse risk. They refuse disorder.
Credit for a mid-sized company is decided, in practice, by an analyst with forty minutes and a file. In those forty minutes he does not find out whether the business is good: he checks whether the pieces match. Accounts that agree with the tax return, cash flow that sustains the instalment, a valid clearance certificate, collateral with a clean title. When a piece does not match, he does not investigate — he moves on to the next file.
That is why most "noes" are not risk decisions, they are reactions to disorder. And disorder is cheap to fix: what is missing is almost always documentary organisation, not assets. The same company, with the same operation and the same figures, moves to a different rate band simply by arriving in order — and that difference, over a five-year contract, usually pays several times the cost of getting in order.
Only then does the map of sources stop being a list and become a choice: development finance at subsidised rates, commercial banks, capital markets, real collateral or assignment of receivables. Each of those doors asks for something different — and almost none asks for what the company thinks it asks for. Development finance requires commitments and eligibility; capital markets require governance and an audited track record; real collateral requires a clean title, which is where most discover the warehouse was never registered. We work on this side of the table: the bank is the client's counterparty, never ours.
There is one detail that decides a great deal and almost nobody checks: the collateral offered must appear on the title in the name of whoever offers it, free of encumbrance and with an area that reconciles. A building constructed and never registered is worth, to the bank, the land alone. It is common to discover this in the week of signing, which is the worst possible moment to discover it.
Structuring fee, which pays for the work of putting the house in order before knocking on the bank's door, and success on the amount actually released — not on the amount approved, not on the amount contracted. Release in instalments generates success in instalments, on the same dates. If the money does not arrive, there is no success to charge.
Official sources, at the exact point — the article of law, the service or the search you can use today. None replaces analysis of the specific case, which is our work.
Say in two lines what you need to resolve. An account manager replies personally, in business hours, and the conversation starts where it makes a difference.
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