So you want a business loan for working capital, equipment, or to buy or refinance a building. Once you decide that you have a good use of funds and you are ready to start your search, first thing I would recommend is pull your own credit file. Do NOT wait for the lenders to do it for you. Here is why. First you need to know what is on that report before everyone else. 

If there are errors or problems on the report you need to be ready to explain them or when possible get them corrected before lenders see the report. Next thing you should understand is that every time any lender pulls your report you get an inquiry posted to your credit file and it decreases your credit score. 

By pulling your own file, you or your consultant can do a much more efficient job in choosing the right lender. You see some lenders will only lend to grade A great creditors and provide rates accorded to that great history. On the other hand there are lenders that only want poor credit profiles because they want a higher yield (read that as profit but also a higher risk) for their dollars they have invested. So by knowing your credit profile ahead of time we know which lenders will like it and which will not BEFORE we submit your application to them. Since there will not be any surprises on the report we can choose the right lender the first time get pre approvals first and greatly reducing the time it takes to get an approval for you. Also this means that it will limit the number of times a lender pulls your credit and limits your credit inquiries. These are critical as many lenders will reject applications for too many inquiries, ie. - Actually looking for a loan. Yeah doesn’t make much sense but we get that rejection a lot! 

So once you decide to get started, where do you get your credit report? There are free sites like credit karma as well as many pay sites like creditchecktotal that will give you an accurate credit report but do NOT give you an accurate credit score. These sites are useful and can be utilized to find errors and get an idea of your credit score. However the only way to get a full accurate actual FICO score, (as opposed to a credit score) which is the one used by the bank and lending institutions, is to go to the provider of said Fico score – www.myfico.com. They are more expensive but you get the real deal there. In all cases you should be purchases the reports from all 3 bureaus – Experian, Trans Union & Equifax as different lenders use different bureaus and you don’t know which ones and the bureaus don’t often match exactly and thus you could have a large issue on one but not the others. 

This will get you a good head start on getting your next loan as well as giving you the information you need to fix any mistakes and take control of your credit. Have more questions, feel free to comment on our blog, got to our website, www.ntibfin.com and ask in our guest book, send me an email. Good luck and of course let us know if we can be of assistance in getting your loans approved.