Show You’re More Than an Application
When you own a small business and its growth depends on financing an equipment lease, your personal credit matters. It matters even if your company’s credit history is blemish free. Equipment lease financiers draw a correlation between your personal and business money habits. In other words, people are likely to treat their business accounts much like they do their personal accounts.
Equipment lease financiers review more than your financing application, including your personal credit history. If you’re a new business owner, your personal credit plays a larger role in your application because your business hasn’t had time to establish a history. There is a saying: Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Your past credit history serves as a crystal ball for creditors determining the odds of getting their money back.
After the Great Recession, small business owners’ credit history is under even more scrutiny than ever. Ironically, the recession is one reason some personal credit histories have blemishes. Before applying for financing to lease equipment essential to your business, everything you do to improve your personal credit is time and effort well spent.
Start Improving Your Personal Credit
- Order a credit report and verify that the information it contains is accurate. It’s common for credit reports to have errors whether they be from inaccurate reporting to someone else’s information being mistakenly added to yours.
- Don’t miss any payments or have insufficient fund notices on any account for three to six months preceding your equipment lease financing application.
- Unless absolutely necessary, do not apply for new loans or open new credit accounts in the months prior to financing an equipment lease.
- Rather than close accounts, pay off the balances. Keeping an account open improves credit age. The longer accounts are open, the better.
- If possible, pay off delinquent balances that have landed in collections. Contact the creditor and request a stop to collections in exchange for full payment.
- Make small purchases and pay the balance off fully every month.
- Remember that just because you have a credit limit, it doesn’t mean you should max out that limit. Keep credit balances in check with your income. A good rule of thumb is to keep the amount you owe less than 30 percent of your income.
- Slow and steady wins the race. Improving your credit score takes time, but it can and will happen if you stick to your plan.
Show There Is More to You Than Your Equipment Lease Financing Application
The goal is to highlight your fortitude in facing and conquering challenges. If your credit history isn’t as high as you’d like it to be, show the lender more positive aspects of your financial performance history. Examples such as long periods of positive cash flow, how much your business sells each month, how quickly you were able to turn a profit, how well you have managed expenses, and testimonials from long-time, loyal customers, etc. demonstrate positive aspects of your financial performance history.
Work with a direct lender, like Global Financial & Leasing Services (GFLS), who is willing to see you as more than numbers and an application because those things don’t always portray character and integrity. If you have imperfect credit or a startup, we listen to your whole story and strive to work with you on getting the equipment you need to succeed.
If your credit history is putting your business’s future on hold, work on improving your personal credit and talk to GFLS about your equipment leasing needs.
When Other Lenders Say No, We Often Say Yes