Commercial finance has two distinct stages: winning the borrower and building the relationship that follows.
The first is where most lenders naturally focus their attention. Where will the next borrower come from? What will it cost to acquire and originate the business? How quickly can the deal close? How efficiently can the organization turn origination activity into funded volume?
From a business perspective, that focus makes sense. Acquisition produces numbers that are easy to quantify, compare, and manage. Cost, volume, conversion, time-to-close, and funded assets can all be measured against a plan.
The other part of the relationship, however, is often overlooked by lenders. It’s not because they don’t understand the importance of nurturing the relationship. It’s because everything that goes into the borrower experience, from how calls are handled and questions are answered to how easily information can be accessed and issues resolved, is much harder to quantify than the economics of acquisition.
But difficulty measuring something doesn’t make it less consequential. In commercial finance, the borrower you’ve already won may be the one worth winning again. And what happens between transactions can shape whether that borrower comes back.
A commercial finance relationship isn't a single transaction. These relationships typically run three to five years, creating a meaningful amount of time between the transaction that wins the borrower and the next opportunity to finance them.
According to Quentin Cote, Managing Director, Commercial at Concord, origination expenses for a new borrower typically run 200 to 1,000 basis points, or 2% to 10% of the deal value. On a $100,000 deal generating a 10% return, an 800-bps origination cost would consume $8,000 of the $10,000 in revenue.
Repeat business changes that math considerably. By the time a borrower comes back, the lender already has an established relationship, a history with the borrower, and a clearer path to the next transaction. Cote estimates that a repeat transaction can reduce origination costs by roughly 75%. In the same example, an 800-bps origination cost falls to roughly 200 bps, reducing the cost from $8,000 to $2,000.
That $6,000 difference changes the economics of the borrower relationship. The value of repeat business can extend into portfolio performance, too. Cote has found that repeat borrowers tend to outperform comparable new customers on credit performance, even when factors such as FICO, time in business, and other characteristics are similar.
Taken together, those economics make the years between transactions more valuable. The borrower relationship is something a lender has a financial reason to protect.
Winning a borrower culminates at closing. Building the relationship starts there. Over the years that follow, seemingly small interactions begin to shape how the borrower experiences the lender. A question gets answered quickly, information is easy to find, and a problem gets resolved before it becomes a bigger one.
The borrower doesn't experience those moments as separate pieces of the lender's operating model. They experience them as one relationship. A responsive agent, an easy process, or a frustrating interaction all contribute to the same underlying impression: what’s it like to work with that lender.
Rarely does one of those interactions determine whether a borrower returns. The challenge is that the experience doesn't live in any one interaction. It accumulates over time, through hundreds of small moments that may be difficult to quantify individually but meaningful in the aggregate.
For lenders, that makes the period between transactions more consequential than it may appear. The experience doesn't take care of itself. It has to be managed, measured, and continually improved.
The difference between a good borrower experience and a frustrating one often comes down to what happens when something falls outside the normal process.
Commercial finance relationships rarely stay within one team or one workflow. What starts as a simple borrower question can require information from somewhere else in the organization, turning a straightforward request into multiple internal handoffs. The borrower doesn't see those teams or processes. They just experience how easily the issue gets resolved.
A strong operation absorbs that complexity without making the borrower navigate it themselves.
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The borrower experience is shaped by decisions most borrowers never see. It depends on how calls are handled, how agents are trained and supported, and how easily an issue can move through the organization. Just as important is what happens after those interactions: whether the lender learns from them and uses that insight to improve the process for the next borrower.
A sophisticated borrower experience requires ongoing attention after the initial systems and processes are in place. Service interactions need to be measured and evaluated. Technology must evolve alongside what the organization learns. Employees need the information and tools to respond effectively, while those insights need to find their way back into the operation.
For Quentin, scale and specialization are what make that investment sustainable.
“When you specialize in this, you’re building capabilities that can serve thousands of borrowers across multiple portfolios. That gives you the ability to invest in things that would be difficult for a single lender to justify on its own.”
A lender can build a strong servicing operation. Sustaining the investment required to keep improving it becomes harder when that investment competes with everything else the business needs to fund. Specialization changes those economics by spreading the cost of that investment across a broader base of clients.
Concord has built continuous improvement into its servicing model. Borrower interactions generate insight that can improve the way the operation works, from how agents handle questions to how borrowers access information and resolve issues. The experience is treated as an ongoing process that can be measured, refined, and improved over time.
A strong borrower experience is easier to recognize than it is to sustain. The real gap is between understanding what borrowers need and having the operating model to keep investing in it over time.
Concord’s approach is built around a simple idea: meet borrowers where they are. That means giving borrowers different ways to interact with the organization based on how they actually work.
Quentin describes the borrower portal as one part of that approach. A trucker who is only home at night, for example, may need a different way to access information or handle an issue than a business owner sitting at a desk during the day.
“If they're truckers and they are only at home at night, we need a full-service portal so they can access their information and take care of their servicing needs when they're home,” he says.
The same principle extends to borrower interactions. Concord tracks how calls are handled, including agent communication, tone, and customer satisfaction. AI helps analyze those interactions at scale, turning that feedback into opportunities to improve the experience.
That feedback also informs how Concord evolves its processes and technology. The goal is to keep improving the experience based on how borrowers actually interact with the organization.
Repeat business can materially change the economics of commercial finance. A borrower that took significant effort to win can become more valuable over time, making the experience between transactions worth protecting.
Sustaining that experience requires continued investment in people, processes, technology, and the feedback loops that improve it over time.
Concord brings that operating model to commercial finance, combining specialized servicing expertise with the infrastructure and technology needed to support the borrower relationship long after closing.
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