[aredmond]

How many times, on average does everyone think a Merchant's credit get pulled when a Broker submits him/her for funding?

I have been thinking about it lately and am starting to feel like we should pull credit 1 time ourselves before sending it out and that's it. If the Lender wants to pull a credit report one more time once a deal has been offered and accepted that is fine. The reason is I have had a couple of declines the last few weeks due to them missing the minimum score by 4-10 points. We try to send most Merchants to 5 Lenders or less and stick to whoever would be the "best fit" but let's face it, lots of Merchants are going to make the rounds.

Example: Restaurant/Retail shop depositing $40,000-$50,000/month 600 score, minimal NSF, some minor blemishes, but pretty decent overall; just about anyone will fund them....you're going to want to send them out to a few places and see who puts the best offer out.....and you have to assume nowadays they either are shopping or will be so you want to play defense....who wants to lose a deal because you inadvertently dropped someone's FICO score.

My questions is: Do a lot of brokers do this already? Do most Lenders accept that type of arrangement? If they do, than great, it's a good selling point and my clients will appreciate it. I''m definitely leaning towards doing that from now on.

Depending on the lender, some will underwrite the file without pulling the credit. You simply tell them what the merchant believes his credit score to be, they will work the deal, but it is always subject to change if the score reflects something different than initially presented.

At the end of the day, you should know your funders well enough to not have to shotgun the deal everywhere looking for the best deal. I will always send my deal to my top A paper lender first, and if it gets declined I will know why and where to send it to the b/c paper based on the dirt on the file. This will limit the credit pulls. Rarely have I ever sent a deal to more than 3 lenders.

Bottomline, know your funders and know your files. That will allow for best practice.