Commercial Financing
A decline is a verdict on a file, not a business.
Owners hear no from a bank and assume the business failed the test. In the applications we have prepared since 2010, the business was rarely the problem: the file was. Time-in-business thresholds, owner income mixed with business income, the right ask pointed at the wrong product.
We arrange lines of credit, working capital, equipment financing, and commercial mortgages with banks, credit unions, and institutional lenders across Canada. Over $1 billion of it in lines of credit alone.
After the No
What the decline letter does not say.
An unsecured bank line of credit at month three is not a thing, for anyone. Most bank credit products carry time-in-business thresholds the branch never mentions, so young businesses apply for products they cannot get and read the decline as a judgment. Meanwhile the products built for them, secured facilities and government-guaranteed term lending, go unmentioned: ISED’s own numbers show 74 percent of CSBFP value going to businesses under a year old.
The other silent killer is the wall between you and your corporation. Your 800 personal credit score proves you are a reliable borrower. It does not make the corporation one. Lenders read business credit, business cash flow, and business documentation, and three good months of revenue is momentum, not yet bankable history. What bridges that gap is structure: the right product, the right security, the right file.
Banks decline products, not futures. The fix is matching the ask to what your file can carry today.
The Products
Every product fits something. None fit everything.
The Timing Rule
Credit is approved on strength and drawn on weakness.
The moment you need a line of credit is the moment you cannot get one. Lenders approve facilities on healthy financials and watch them get drawn in hard months; they do not approve them in the hard month. The operators who sail through a cash crunch set the line up in a good quarter and let it sit unused. That is not wasted effort. That is the product working.
When the crunch is already here, the options narrow and get more expensive, and this is where merchant cash advances get sold. We treat MCA with respect: it is expensive money, and in the right scenario it is the right tool. The rules we give every client: never finance a permanent expense with one, and never borrow more than the business can repay in a slow month. If you are already inside one, the path out is a refinance, and lenders do take that file when the underlying business works.
Already carrying expensive short-term debt? The refinancing lane covers the way out.
The System
First, we read your file the way lenders read it.
Most declines we see were product mismatches: the right ask at the wrong desk, or the wrong ask entirely. Every engagement starts with the same assessment: your financials and your ask, weighed against what each lender desk actually approves. It ends in one of two places, and both of them move you forward.
If the file is fundable
It goes to the right desk, and only the right desk.
We match your profile to the lenders whose approval patterns fit it. No blasting your file across forty inboxes, no surprise calls from lenders you never chose.
If it is not fundable yet
You get a plan that names what blocks you.
What stopped the file, what changes it, and how long that takes. Most declines are fixable; the plan is the work of fixing them, on a timeline you can hold us to.
The Record
The numbers under the advice.
PFG figures are our own application history. The CSBFP statistic is ISED's published 2024-25 number.
Questions, answered
What owners ask us about financing.
How long does my business need to exist before a line of credit?
For an unsecured bank line, most desks want established history, commonly around two years, plus financial statements that show the cash flow to service it. Under that threshold the realistic paths are secured facilities, the CSBFP line of credit component (capped at $150,000, rate capped at prime plus 5 percent), or guaranteed term lending. The product changes; the goal does not.
I was denied even though my credit score is in the 800s. Why?
Because the corporation applied, not you. Personal credit tells a lender you repay personal debts; it says little about whether the business generates the cash flow to repay business debt. The file that fixes this shows business banking history, clean books, and a specific use of funds. Personal strength helps at the guarantee stage; it does not replace the business case.
My revenue is growing. Why does the bank keep saying no?
Revenue is not the same as bankable cash flow. Three strong months prove momentum; a credit team is pricing the next 36. What converts momentum into approvals: months of consistent deposits, financials a CPA has touched, an ask sized to the cash flow rather than the ambition. Sometimes the honest answer is not yet, and the plan to change it runs through exactly those items.
Cash is tight right now. What should I do first?
Triage in this order: know your real number (how much, by when), stop the most expensive outflow first, and talk to your existing lender before missing a payment rather than after. Then look at facilities. Be warned that anything approvable inside days costs more than anything approvable inside weeks, and a daily-debit advance taken in panic is the most common regret we see. We will tell you plainly when we cannot move fast enough to help, because pretending otherwise costs you money.
Why do banks treat restaurants as high risk, and what changes their mind?
Restaurants carry a category flag at most credit desks: failure-rate statistics, thin margins, and cash-heavy revenue make underwriters cautious before they read a single line of your file. What overcomes the flag is the file itself: months of consistent deposits, a lease with real term remaining, equipment pledged as security, and an ask that includes honest opening working capital instead of pretending the ramp-up will not happen. Government-guaranteed lending carries much of this lane precisely because the guarantee absorbs the category risk the bank will not.
Is a merchant cash advance ever the right call?
Sometimes, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Blended cost on an MCA commonly runs from the high teens to north of sixty percent annualized depending on the structure, with repayment debited daily or weekly against your sales. When a short, sharp, revenue-generating need cannot wait for underwriting, expensive money on Monday can beat cheap money in six weeks. It should be a bridge, never a habit.
How do I get out of an MCA stack?
Refinancing out is a real path with a real bar. Lenders taking out an advance want to see that the underlying business works without it: stabilized deposits, current books, and the full picture of every advance outstanding, disclosed up front. Stacked advances make it harder, not impossible. The refinance replaces daily debits with a structured payment the cash flow can actually carry.
What does PFG charge for financing work?
You pay us, mostly when the funding lands: a success fee tied to placement. Lenders pay us nothing, which means no lender can buy our recommendation. When an assessment finds the file is not fundable yet, the forward plan is quoted advisory work, agreed before it starts. No upfront placement fees, no surprise invoices.
Program figures follow ISED's published CSBFP guidelines as of June 2026. Cost ranges for alternative products vary by provider and structure; we run the math on your actual offer before you sign it.
Get the product match before the application.
One assessment reads your file against the products and the desks that approve them. Applying to the wrong product is how good businesses collect declines.
You pay us, mostly when funding lands. Lenders pay us nothing.