How the Underwriting Process Works with Bond Street

If you’re looking for a small business loan from Bond Street to grow your business, your first step is to complete their online application. As we discussed in the first part of this three-part series, Bond Street gathers a whole lot of information about you and your business during this initial application phase. Bond Street can then send this documentation, along with your credit information, to an underwriter for further review.

During the underwriting phase—the second stage in the funding process—Bond Street will delve into your business information and the documentation you either uploaded yourself through the online application or provided through a third party integrated source, like the IRS, QuickBooks, or your bank.

This gives the lender more time to determine what missing documentation it still needs to process your application and whether it wants to assume the risk to fund your business in the first place.

The underwriting process typically takes a couple days or less, depending on what documentation you supplied during the initial application and how long it takes to retrieve missing information.

Let’s take a closer look at how the underwriting process works at Bond Street. From there, you can get a better picture of what to expect once you apply online.

Be Ready for the Call

Within two days of submitting your online application, you’ll receive a phone call from a Bond Street underwriter.

If you supplied all the necessary documentation already, the underwriter probably won’t need any additional financial data, and your application process will be that much faster!

However, the online application gives you the option of skipping certain steps: submitting your income statements for the last two calendar years plus up-to-date, your latest balance sheet, and any necessary cash flow statements for the last two calendar years plus up-to-date.

Even if you chose to skip these sections during your online application, you’ll still need to provide this information in order to get a loan from Bond Street. It’s helpful to gather those necessary financial documents and have them ready to send over to Bond Street when you get a phone call from an underwriter.

Let’s Talk

When an underwriter calls you, be prepared to spend 20 – 30 minutes on the phone talking about your business and filling in any blank spots.

During the call, you should be ready to discuss your operations and future strategy, too.

More specifically, the Bond Street representative will want to know where your business is today, how you plan to grow your company, and how you want to use your future funding, says Credit Analyst Eric Walpert.

Red Flags to Look Out For

Because Bond Street’s online application process is so detailed, you ‘ll generally find out if there are any issues with your application before it hits the underwriting stage.

For example, if you apply for a loan and don’t have at least $200,000 in annual revenue, you won’t be able to proceed any further with your application. Instead, you’ll get a message and a follow-up email thanking you for considering Bond Street as a lender, but explaining that you can’t qualify for a loan unless you generate $200,000 or more a year.

You also won’t be a candidate for a loan if you’re not based in the U.S. or your business was launched less than two years ago.

But here’s probably the biggest red flag that can prevent your application from moving any further: a bankruptcy in the past 7 years. Although Bond Street makes a point of taking a big picture look at your company and future plans before deciding whether to fund you, they can’t overlook a recent bankruptcy.

What Next?

Once the underwriter has all the necessary information and a better read on your business and future prospects…

Bond Street projects out your business, decides whether to approve your loan, and prices that funding out.

Before reaching back out to you, Bond Street conducts a second internal review of your application, just to double-check their analysis and make sure they’re willing to lend you the capital you’ve asked for.

Finally, Bond Street makes a final funding decision, usually within two days.

Once your loan has been approved and you sign the paperwork, you should receive your funding within 24 hours.

We’ll discuss what a loan offer looks like and what you can expect in the third part of our series on how to get a loan through Bond Street. It’s also a good idea to review the detailed online application process in our first story.

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from Fundera Ledger https://www.fundera.com/blog/2016/06/07/underwriting-bond-street/