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This is an interesting take on what it means to be a direct lender. To summarize, almost all financial institutions lend money that is not ‘their money,’ it is their customer’s deposits. This is why they are able to …

I read a financing expert’s Blog post about his experience helping a client get funding. It provided a much needed reality check as to how financing availability is not static; rather it’s constantly changing and even financially strong, profitable businesses may find that funds are not as easy to get as they once were.

“I recently worked with a client seeking financing from their business where the business is well established, has an excellent balance sheet, and is very profitable. The Owners were experienced, established, and had a solid track record of performance.

So why were they looking for financing?

Their primary and only institutional lender could no longer underwrite the type of business they were in.

Sam’s club has begun wearing a new hat; Business lender. They offer business loans through the SBA’s community express program. To be precise, they are not actually making the loans, they have partnered with Superior Financial Group, a leading SBA lender.  This seems like a strange fit for Sam’s club, a large retailer, to be playing financier. But it highlights an important shift in how businesses are demanding money; they want it quick and easy.

A financing decision that the State of California is in the process of making is the perfect model of how asset based lending can be used. The State of California needs money to run their organization (sound familiar business owners?). However the State is not in a good position to take on more debt. In their case it is because they already have a great deal of debt but in the case of business owners, they may be too small, too young or perceived as “too risky” to borrow. However the State of California has an asset, in their case office buildings, that they are considering using as collateral in a ‘sale lease-back’ arrangement so that they can make use of the cash value of the asset while still maintaining use of the property. This is the prototypical model for asset based lending. Let me break it down further.

Purchase order financing is a unique form of financing that can be utilized very profitably. It essentially makes it possible to handle orders that otherwise would have not been financially possible or responsible to take on. This means that Purchase order financing or PO financing increases a businesses ability to make sales and thus make profits.

It also has positive affects on a business’s cash flows.