When a loan is delayed, denied, or downsized, the cost isn't the loan. It's the business.
An independent, committee-level read on your application before it hits a bank — because the difference between an approval in March and a rejection in June is often the difference between expanding and closing.
Submitted in March. Declined in May. By the time the second bank looks, summer's project window is closed — and the $1.2M contract goes to the firm that was ready.
Lease renewal in 60 days. Bank wants 90 to decide. A rejection here doesn't mean reapplying — it means closing the doors on twelve years of work.
Approved — but for half the amount. The CNC machine doesn't happen. The competitor who got their full facility starts taking your customers by Q3.
The fee is the smallest line item in this decision.
A single declined application can cost a season, a contract, and a mark on your file that follows you to every other bank. These engagements are priced to be a rounding error against what you stand to lose.
Pre-Application Diagnostic
Most owners discover a fatal flaw in their application from the rejection letter. This finds it first — while you can still fix it.
- Avoid the $40K–$80K cost of one declined cycle — the lost quarter of growth, the bridge financing at 30%+, the contract that walked while you waited.
- Don't leave a hard inquiry and a rejection on your file — a single decline can lower the approval odds at the next 3 lenders you approach.
- Save 60–90 days of guesswork. Know in 5 business days whether to apply, fix first, or restructure — instead of finding out via a rejection letter a quarter from now.
- The math: $1,000 today to avoid losses that typically run 40–80× that. And the $1,000 carries forward in full toward a deeper engagement.
- Written diagnostic of the 2–3 most critical issues in your file
- Go / fix-first / restructure verdict on applying now
- Delivered within 5 business days
- Full $1,000 credited toward a Bank-Readiness engagement within 60 days
Bank-Readiness Assessment
Banks won't tell you why they declined. We tell you before they decide — what will get you approved, what will get you reduced, and what will get you a no.
- Prevent a partial approval that's typically 40–60% of what you asked for — on a $400K request, that's $160K–$240K of project funding that simply doesn't happen.
- Recover the 90 days a declined application costs. For a growing business, each month of delay typically costs $15K–$20K in opportunity, bridge financing, and turned-away work — that's $45K–$60K per cycle.
- Don't burn the relationship with your primary bank by submitting a file that gets declined — restoring a soured banking relationship can take 12–18 months.
- The math: $2,500 to avoid losses that on a typical $250K–$500K loan compound to $50K–$150K. The fee is roughly 1% of what's on the line.
- Full readiness scorecard with the committee's likely decision
- Every ratio scored against your industry's lender thresholds
- Ranked fix-list — what to repair first, what can wait
- Best-fit lender profile and approach recommendation
- 15-minute summary call with your analyst included
Assessment + Strategy Engagement
For owners with a deadline — a lease, a contract, a season, a counter-offer. The full review plus working counsel on sequencing it right.
- Protect the deal on the table. A contract worth $500K–$2M, a lease renewal, a property closing — losing any one of these to a slow loan decision dwarfs every other line item in this engagement.
- Skip the 30–45 days lost approaching the wrong bank first. We name the lender most likely to say yes to a file like yours — and the order to approach the rest.
- For a seasonal business, missing the window is the year. An HVAC firm that doesn't fund in time for summer; a retailer that misses Q4 — these are 30–50% of annual revenue you don't get back.
- The math: $5,000 against a contract, lease, or peak-season opportunity that's usually worth 100–400× this fee. The engagement pays for itself if it preserves a single week of the window.
- The complete Bank-Readiness Assessment
- 90-minute working session with your analyst
- Lender selection and the order to approach them in
- 30 days of follow-up correspondence as you execute
The Readiness Partnership
A 90-day senior engagement for businesses where the loan isn't growth — it's survival, succession, or a one-shot opportunity that won't come back. We stay beside you through every round of fixes, every revised submission, and every conversation with the bank, until you have an approval in hand or a clear-eyed answer that you do not.
- · Survival: for a viable business losing access to working capital, the loan failing is often the end — twelve, twenty, thirty years of equity zeroed.
- · Succession: a buyout that doesn't fund means selling to whoever's left at a 30–50% discount, or not selling at all.
- · Generational opportunity: the property, the acquisition, the contract that doesn't come back — typically $1M–$10M of one-time value.
- · Negotiation leverage: walking into the bank with a clean, defensible file shifts terms by 50–150 basis points on the lifetime of the loan.
The math: $10,000 against outcomes that are typically 100–1,000× the fee. If this engagement preserves a single percent of what's on the line, it has paid for itself many times over.
Deep-dive consultation — by appointment
Additional live time with your analyst on a specific question — restructuring a request, pressure-testing a fix, walking your finance team through the file. Sessions are online and may be voice-only.
Independent
We're not a lender or broker and take no commission — paid only to tell you the truth.
Charterholder-led
Every assessment is led and signed off by a CFA charterholder and an FRM.
Diagnostic credits toward review
The full $1,000 from a Red-Flag Scan is credited toward a Bank-Readiness engagement within 60 days.
A loan you needed and didn't get is a different kind of "no."
It doesn't just mean trying again. It means whatever the loan was for — the contract, the lease, the next chapter — happens without it. Find out where you really stand before the bank decides for you.
Begin with the diagnostic — $1,000