Meet your Chief Pilot for Ground Equipment Finance...

Lenders are now considering your credit score when assessing your applications. Scores rank on a 0 to 1200 count, with 1200 being the best score you can maintain. A score between 700-1000 is generally the sweet spot for lenders to be satisfied, but a lower score won’t totally rule you out of a new loan. THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CREDIT SCORES:

Every application you place to a bank leaves a permanent “enquiry” on your records. Too many enquiries in a short space of time is likely to impact your score negatively, leading to difficulty obtaining finance from lenders or higher interest rates. THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: An inexperienced Broker might not approach the right bank for you the first time, potentially resulting in a loan application decline. As a workaround, they might then resort to ‘flooding’ your application to multiple lenders until they finally get you approved. This can burn your credit score, and it’s detrimental to getting support from financiers in future. OUR APPROACH: Machine Finance never formally submits any applications to lenders unless we have your permission and consent. We take the time to assess all of our clients thoroughly, so we know that the first lender we approach for you is the most likely to offer you an approval. It’s a matter of respect, and the reason why no one sets the standard higher than us.

Absolutely, and in fact, we usually recommend doing this up front so you can work out how much money you can finance. This will help you shop for equipment in a price range similar to that of your finance approval amount. Having your finance pre-approved also means you can negotiate pricing on your new equipment with confidence knowing you have finance already arranged. Once you find the equipment you want to buy, we simply need to request a formal tax invoice from the seller, and then we can start the process of having your seller paid. WHAT ARE MASTER LIMITS? If you are buying multiple machines in the near future, you should ask us about Master Limits. For our larger clients who may have a spend requirement of more than $1million each year, we can arrange to set up a Master Limit. It’s like an annual ‘pre approval’ or ‘ceiling’ you are allowed to use for each new piece of equipment you need. Once it’s arranged and set up for you, we simply use what is available for us in the Master Limit to finance your new equipment finance loan. This presents us from urgently having to source you finance each time you find equipment you need to buy.

Equipment Finance loans (Chattel Mortgages) are fixed principal and interest loans. This means that the total principal and interest in the loan is fixed, and repayable in full. When reviewing a chattel mortgage contract, you will see it clearly shows the amount you’re borrowing, the interest fees you’ll be charged, and the total amount including principal and interest you’re liable to repay in full. If you want to pay the loan out early, you simply have to pay out the balance of what is owing in your contract at that point in time. Because of this, customers are rarely charged a standalone fee for paying out early, however, depending on the lender, you may see a nominal admin fee of a couple hundred dollars charged to you for paying out early. PLEASE CONSIDER BELOW BEFORE MAKING ADDITIONAL REPAYMENTS We note that making additional instalments is possible with some lenders, however it’s important you know that making extra payments to chattel mortgages generally only ‘accelerates’ the time for you to repay the full principal and interest balance. It won’t necessarily save you interest like it does on home loans for example. We suggest paying surplus cash to lending products that charge a interest on the principal outstanding balance such as credit cards, overdrafts or home loans instead, as reducing those balances will reduce the interest you’re paying.