How We Lend

It starts with a conversation, not a data room. Send us the company, what it needs, the amount involved and what sits behind it. Our lending team comes back within one business day, and we tell you quickly whether it is a file we can act on. If it is not, we tell you why.

Before the file goes further, we run a conflict check and complete identity, ownership and source-of-funds verification. Scope, timeline, responsibilities and fees are set out in writing. Detailed information changes hands only once those terms, and an NDA if you need one, are in place.

A file that answers the questions before they are asked closes months earlier than one that does not. We review the data room, interview management and verify the site and market ourselves, then build four proofs: commercial proof that the revenue is real, financial proof that the cash flow services the debt, structure proof that the security and ranking work, and execution proof that the team can deliver the plan.

The financial model is built from primary sources, with each assumption sourced and dated, and base, downside and stress cases built in.

With the evidence in place, we design the facility around the cash flow, the security actually available, the tenor and the currency: senior, mezzanine, unitranche, bridge, asset-backed, trade or a blend. Security is treated as a structuring question from the start, not paperwork for later, and debt is sized to the downside case.

Where the requirement is larger than one provider should hold, we design the club, syndicate or co-lending structure at this stage, so every tranche sits with the party best suited to hold it.

Where the facility fits our mandate, RFG takes the credit decision and writes it directly. The same team that tests the business writes the credit paper, so there is no chain of committees in between.

Where it is larger, RFG leads and brings in co-lenders on the same credit work. As the facility seasons, we refinance it with the capital partners best suited to hold it, approached in parallel so terms compete.

Terms are drafted to the transaction, not a template. We manage documentation, conditions precedent and closing mechanics through to drawdown, and hold any club or syndicate together to signing.

Legal and tax advisers are coordinated around a single timetable, so you run one process instead of several. We stay engaged until the money moves.

Drawdown is not the end of the relationship. Where scoped, we track performance and covenants against the plan that was funded, and flag early when a structure no longer fits the business. A refinancing opened well before a covenant test is a very different conversation from one opened after it.

As the business grows, facilities can be extended, refinanced into longer-dated institutional capital or replaced. You keep the model and every deliverable, so the work is updated rather than rebuilt.