A finance partner for your clientsyou keep the relationship

The situation

Lawyers, accountants, buyers agents, insolvency practitioners and brokers regularly encounter clients with a commercial finance need that sits outside their own core service — a client facing an ATO debt during an insolvency matter, a developer client needing construction finance, a buyer needing a commercial mortgage arranged quickly. Referring that client to the wrong partner risks the relationship you've built with them; referring to no one at all leaves a genuine need unmet, and sometimes leaves the client to find their own, less considered solution.

The right referral partner reflects well on your own advice, while the wrong one — slow, unclear about fees, or prone to overstepping into your client relationship — reflects poorly on it, even though the finance itself was never your responsibility.

Why the first answer is often no

Most introducers don't have an existing relationship with a commercial finance specialist they trust to handle a referral properly — reporting back, respecting the boundary of the referral, and not treating the introduction as an opportunity to cross-sell unrelated services to a client who came for one specific thing. Without that trust, many introducers either sit on the referral, attempt to handle the finance question themselves outside their expertise, or refer to a generalist broker who doesn't have the panel relationships a genuinely complex commercial file needs.

A previous poor experience compounds this: an introducer who's had a referral go quiet for weeks, or watched a partner attempt to sell the client unrelated products, understandably becomes reluctant to refer again at all, even where the client's need is genuine and time-sensitive.

How it gets funded

Referred clients can be placed across the full range of commercial and investment-purpose finance — short-term business loans, construction finance, commercial property loans, SMSF commercial loans, asset and trade finance, and impaired-credit or ATO-debt situations among them — so most commercial finance needs your clients bring you can go to a single, trusted partner rather than being split across several. Banks, private lenders and specialist funds are all part of the panel we place with, matched to whatever the client's specific situation requires.

For clients coming out of an insolvency matter specifically, we bring the same confidentiality and case-by-case assessment we apply to any impaired-credit borrower, recognising that an insolvency practitioner's referral often comes with real time pressure and a client who needs a lender that understands the context rather than declining on the history alone. For a lawyer or accountant referring a property investor or developer client, the finance conversation runs alongside your own advice rather than in place of it, so the client experiences one coordinated process rather than two disconnected ones.

What to have ready

A referral agreement is set out in writing before any client is introduced, covering the fee arrangement and reporting expectations. Beyond that, a brief description of the client's situation and finance need is all that's required to start — we take on the detailed fact-finding directly with the client from there, keeping you informed rather than needing you to relay every detail yourself. Where the referral is time-sensitive, a short note of the deadline up front lets us prioritise the file appropriately from day one.

Working with us

You retain the client relationship throughout; our role is arranging the finance, not replacing the advice you already provide. We report back at the key stages — submission, terms offered, and settlement — so you're informed rather than left to chase updates, and the referral agreement specifically excludes cross-selling unrelated products or services to your client.

A referral fee arrangement is agreed and documented before any introduction is made, so there's no ambiguity about what's in it for you once a client is referred. And where you'd like ongoing visibility across multiple referred clients, we're happy to set up a regular reporting cadence rather than reporting only when you ask, so a busy referral relationship doesn't become harder to track than a single one-off introduction.

Over time, most referral partnerships settle into a straightforward rhythm: you flag a client need, we take it from there and keep you posted, and the client comes away seeing a coordinated team behind them rather than a handoff between unconnected parties.