IN FOCUS / CRANE FINANCING
TOUGH FINANCING ENVIRONMENT CONTINUES Banks are still being difficult when it comes to the financing of crane deals. Jeff Wilson, senior partner Equipment Finance for Finlease, discusses ways crane companies can still have financing approved quickly. Cranes and Lifting finds out more. THE ROYAL COMMISSION into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Service Industry was a tough examination for Australia’s banks, insurers and financial services companies. A year since the commissioner, Kenneth Hayne, announced recommendations to fix the industry, there has been immense upheaval with billions of dollars of stolen money being returned to customers and multiple court cases underway. Jeff Wilson, senior partner, Equipment Finance for Finlease provides insights into how financial institutions are viewing the crane sector. “From my perspective, the banks are still being difficult when it comes to the financing of crane deals. The primary lenders are being challenging and problematic and a number of primary lenders have culled staff which is affecting turnaround times and the speed in which they can deliver approvals. The current situation is a combination of a number of factors. A couple of the major banks recently retrenched a stack of people in their sales areas, including business development managers and their assistants,” Wilson said. “Typically, Finlease used to deal with a
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business banking centre that would have had up to seven business bankers and we’d be able to call about a commercial loan or financing enquiry. Those seven bankers would have had an assistant who managed the paperwork and back office work relating to the enquiry. This allowed the business development manager to get on with the role of selling financial packages. “Today, these banks have retrenched two or three sales staff and also removed their assistants. They’ve also reduced a lot of the bonuses and incentives from the staff and this is negatively affecting the mood and moral of the remaining team. In turn, the remaining bankers have little incentive to work the extra hours they used to, they’re becoming more nine to five bankers,” he said. Wilson can understand why morale is currently low within these banking teams. “It’s understandably frustrating for the teams who must be thinking they weren’t the ones that created the mess that led to the Banking Royal Commission. Their business units and their customers continue to perform really well, and they are still reaching budgets and targets and yet they’ve seen
Jeff Wilson, Finlease, senior partner Equipment Finance.
staff taken, workloads increased and bonuses taken away. Who wouldn’t feel disillusioned?” he said. “In a roundabout way this situation opens the door further for a business like Finlease. We are dealing with specialised departments we’re not dealing with the day to day bankers in a business banking centre and because we retain the resources ,and we will always will, we are able to put together applications in the complete format and present it to the bank with all the required information. This makes it a whole lot easier for them to make the decision to approve the finance. In effect, we are presenting a completed package rather than the bankers having to source the required paperwork try and formulate the package. We are now in a role where we are streamlining the application process for both our customer and the bank,” Wilson said. Wilson suggests that by using the
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