Every equipment lender on the panel — bank, non-bank, captive, specialist — opens with the same four questions before they will put a number on anything. Turnover, asset price, deposit, trading history. It does not matter what category they sit in or what the asset is. Have these four ready and the conversation gets short. Turn up without them and you spend two days going back and forth on things you could have answered in the first call.
This is not a credit lecture. It is the prep that turns a vague enquiry into a real quote. Here is what each number does and why the lender cares.
1. Turnover — what the business actually brings in
Annual turnover is the first thing a lender wants, because it sets the ceiling on what they will lend. The rough rule a credit team carries in their head: the new repayment should sit comfortably inside what the business can service, and turnover is the starting point for working that out. A $90k truck against a $1.2M turnover is an easy conversation. The same truck against a $180k turnover is a different file entirely.
A $90k truck against $1.2M turnover is an easy conversation — the repayment is a small, obvious slice of what you bring in. The same truck against $180k turnover means the repayment is suddenly a big chunk of monthly takings, and credit reads that as a very different level of risk.
Have last financial year's turnover ready, and have a sense of where this year is tracking. If the business is growing, say so — a lender reads a rising line very differently from a flat or falling one. You do not need audited accounts to start; a ballpark from your BAS or your accountant gets the conversation moving.
2. Asset price — what you are buying, and what it is worth
The asset price sounds obvious, but it carries more than the number on the invoice. The lender wants to know what the asset is, how old it is, who you are buying it from, and whether the price stacks up against market. A truck, an excavator and a workshop fit-out are read very differently — some assets hold value, some depreciate fast, and the lender prices the risk accordingly.
Have the asset detail ready: make, model, year, hours or kilometres, and the source. Dealer or private sale changes the file shape — there is a full breakdown for trucks in why a private-sale truck needs a different file shape. The cleaner the asset detail, the faster the lender can size the deal against it.
3. Deposit — what you are putting in
Deposit, or equity in the deal, tells the lender how much skin you have in the game and how exposed they are if it goes wrong. Some deals fund with nothing down. Plenty do. But a deposit changes the conversation: it lowers the lender's exposure, it can open up a sharper rate, and on a tighter file it can be the difference between a yes and a maybe.
Know what you can put in, and know whether you would rather preserve the cash. There is a real trade-off here — sometimes holding the deposit and paying a touch more on rate is the smarter play for cash flow, sometimes putting it in is what gets the deal across the line. That trade-off shifts depending on whether you are looking at a bank or a non-bank, which is worth understanding before you choose — there is a full comparison in what the 200bps actually buys you.
4. Trading history — how long, and how clean
The fourth number is time: how long the business has been trading, and how clean the conduct has been. A business with three or four years of consistent trading and no missed payments is the easy file. A new ABN, or a business with a bump in the road, needs a different lender — and that is where the panel breadth earns its place.
Banks lean hard on trading history. A tier 1 bank typically wants a couple of years of clean trading before they will move quickly, and they read any conduct slip conservatively. The broker-market non-bank category is far more comfortable with a new ABN or a recent restructure, provided the rest of the file is sound. Knowing which category your trading history points to is half the job — it is why a new ABN is not the dead end the banks make it feel like.
Why having the four ready actually matters
Here is the practical payoff. When all four numbers turn up in the first conversation, a broker can place the file with the right lender category straight away, and the quote that comes back is real — not a placeholder that falls over the moment the credit team sees the detail. When the numbers turn up in dribs and drabs, every gap is a reason for the lender to slow down, and the deal stretches out.
The four numbers also sit directly behind the most slippery phrase in finance — "subject to credit". A quote built on four solid numbers is a far more reliable answer than one built on guesses; there is a full read of that in what "subject to credit" actually means. The tighter the four numbers, the closer "subject to credit" gets to a real yes.
You can see exactly where these four land in the process on the how it works page. None of this needs to be perfect or audited to start the conversation — it needs to be honest and roughly right.
The short version
Turnover, asset price, deposit, trading history. Four numbers, every lender, every time. Get them straight before you enquire and you skip the back-and-forth that eats the first week of most deals.
Got the four roughly in hand? Send them through and we'll start the file — and tell you in the first call which lender category they point to and what is worth pushing on.