Breaking the bank: non-bank lenders are pulling ahead in small-business financing. Here's what the playing field looks like

Entrepreneur, March, 1998 by Cynthia E. Griffin

That's the question 33-year-old Ken Seiff asked himself when his company, Pivot Rules Inc., faced the scenario described above. "I needed to open letters of credit for future [clothing] lines, but I couldn't afford them," recalls the New York City sportswear manufacturer, who needed to pay his Hong Kong-based suppliers.

Seiff's accountant suggested he contact Heller Financial Inc. This Chicago-based international commercial finance company offers equipment financing and leasing, factoring, working capital loans, collateral-based and cash-flow financing, small-business lending, and specialized equity investments. The factoring division specializes in the garment and textiles industries - a good match for Seiff.

"Banks aren't terribly interested in the apparel industry, and from what I know of them, they're also not very interested in start-ups," says Seiff, explaining why he chose Heller. "We also had a relatively limited collateral base, which would have made it even less enticing for a bank."

Heller, on the other hand, was an aggressive lender willing to purchase and collect Pivot Rules' accounts receivable. What attracted Seiff to Heller - even more than the fact that it met his immediate needs - was the potential he saw to establish a long-term relationship.

Seiff's decision to go with a nonbank lender for financing is one being made by a growing number of small-business owners. In fact, according to the SBA, two of the top three lenders for the SBA's 7(a) program for fiscal year 1996 (based on number of loans approved) were nonbank lending institutions. The Money Store Inc. was the top lender, AT&T Small Business Lending Corp. was third. Seiff's lender, Heller Financial Inc., came in 11th.

There's no doubt commercial finance companies are steadily encroaching on the small-business lending territory previously dominated by banks. Finance Companies and Small Business Borrowers, a study conducted for the SBA Office of Advocacy by Dr. George W. Haynes of Montana State University in Bozeman, found that from 1980 to 1992, nonbank financing companies increased their business lending from slightly less than $86 billion to almost $300 billion. Finance companies are also the second-largest supplier of business credit (13 percent) behind banks (54 percent).

"In general, finance companies want to see strong assets to back up a loan and will monitor those assets much more carefully. For that reason, they can loan more against the assets. So chances are a smaller business might get a larger loan from a finance company [than from a bank]," says Bill Sihler, a finance professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. However, says Sihler, this money will cost more. Consequently, a business must decide which is more important: the amount of money or how much it will cost to borrow it.

A DIFFERENT BREED

Nonbank lenders come in all shapes and sizes. They are factors, commercial finance companies, credit unions, credit card companies and even life insurance firms. Heller, for example, in addition to traditional asset-based lending, also provided Seiff with overadvances (when you're given more money than your assets are worth) and letters of credit for exporting, and even allowed the company to deposit the proceeds of an initial public offering.

"I was concerned that at a bank, I would just be a number," says Seiff. "At Heller, they provided me with a team I could call any time. I knew that would be important to us if we were going to grow quickly."

Morristown, New Jersey-based AT&T Capital Corp. has evolved from a telephone equipment leasing company into the third-largest SBA lender in the country. "Our risk management is different from a bank. We offer greater flexibility and more understanding of asset-based financing," says Robert Neagle, a senior vice president with AT&T Capital's Business Finance Group.

AT&T's loan volume makes the company better able to assess risk, contends Neagle. "We do so many loans, we can capture and evaluate the data on performance by industry and geography," he says. "Consequently, a loan that seems risky to another lender may not be so to us."

Because AT&T is a preferred SBA lender, Neagle says it can also process loans more quickly. Its loans for equipment, construction and real estate financing range from $50,000 to $2 million; working capital loans generally start at $2 million.

The Money Store Inc. has been lending to small businesses since 1979. In 1996, it had a total loan portfolio of $2.3 billion.

"Since 1983, The Money Store has been the nation's largest SBA lender," says Paul Leliakov, president of the company's commercial lending division.

What makes The Money Store different from banks, says Leliakov, is the commercial lending division's exclusive focus on small-business loans. "In a bank, you may not receive the same level of expertise," he says. "Also, some of the financing products we offer may not be available at a bank." The Money Store offers full implementation of the SBA program. For example, it offers franchise loans, whereas some banks do not.