The Business Financing Prime Rate Is A Bit of An Illusion

Most everything we here about the prime lending rates being kept at historically low levels by their respective country administrators to keep the global economy from stalling out during the recession is a bit of a farce for the small and medium sized business that contribute to driving the economy.

Yes, if you’re a well established company with a senior bank credit facility, your cost of operating has gone down due to historically low interest rates.  But in many cases, the cost saving that are realized wouldn’t make or break established companies with the balance sheets to qualify for low interest rate debt.

If a company gets offside of their balance sheet and income statement covenants with a bank, they either get their interest rate jacked up nullifying any savings, or end up with a special loans tag which can  lead to a forced payout that is even more expensive if not fatal in some cases.

For all other businesses that are looking to start, expand, grow, replace assets, and so on, interest rates near prime are mostly a myth.

Unfortunately, no one told business owners who are frantically in search of business capital right now, working off their long term conditioning of what should be available to them based on where the prime rate is sitting, that things are not what they seem.

Whether this is good or bad, fair or unfair isn’t really the issue.  Prime plus rates are difficult to secure because the economic risk is higher and lenders are being more cautious until the recessionary impacts work themselves out.

The key learning is that things are not what they seem and as a result, business owners need to reassess their ability to access incremental capital and the related cost that comes with it.

Failure to adjust to the current environment can not only waste valuable time and money searching for something that isn’t there, but it can also put basic business operations and incremental sales opportunities at risk.

The solution may be to forgo expansion or new business endeavors in the short term, or focus on lower levels of potential profit to cash flow a higher cost of capital.

For businesses offside on their financial covenants that have received a demand for repayment from their senior lender, it could be very unlikely that a similar senior lender is going to be available to replace the existing one and an extended search for money that has a low probability of being there could run the business out of time for structured and civilized refinancing.

Adjusting financing expectations sooner than later can have a profound impact on the long term health of the business.

Click Here To Speak To Brent Finlay About Your Business Financing Requirements.