Financing | January 2025 Finding your long-term credit delivery solution

The first and most important step is placing process over product. When you focus on meeting the end goal as the top priority, you’re more likely to end up with the best long-term solution that accounts for current needs and future financial objectives.

This is where the Truist Business Lifecycle Advisory approach provides value to your decision-making process. Because every client relationship starts with building a deep understanding of your company’s goals and challenges, your relationship manager shares a broad perspective that helps you balance both immediate needs and long-term goals.

“The cornerstones of optimized credit delivery are integration and consistent, clear communication that extends across every stage of your business lifecycle,” says Wade Rinaca, group CCB credit leader at Truist. “Some of our portfolio managers and relationship managers have worked with the same clients for 10 or 20 years. They have an evolved understanding of that client’s context and goals that enables them to anticipate the ripple effects not just of selecting particular credit options but of interconnected factors, like supply chain impacts, that can create headwinds.”

Rinaca stresses that when a client comes to a relationship manager with a purpose and parameters, the relationship manager is operating within a fully integrated system that empowers them to act fast and effectively. A Truist relationship manager can call in a specialist on the requested form of credit to help accelerate the client’s ability to select a custom solution.

“Done right, credit delivery is a seamless process that hinges on two key factors—a shared understanding of how the credit delivery process should work and a dedicated team that operates under a unified leadership structure,” says Rinaca. “Every bit of communication between our team and your company is in the service of fostering that shared understanding, and every step we take to get you the best credit solution is a comprehensive team effort on our end.”

Here’s an example. If a growth-stage healthcare company is offered a traditional business loan with fantastic terms to purchase MRI equipment for each of its clinics, it may be tempted to jump at the offer. But with a long-term view, the company will understand that MRI machines are typically obsolete within a few years, meaning other forms of credit may make better business sense.

While a traditional loan would cover that initial purchase, in a few years the clinics will be stuck with outdated equipment. In this case, a credit solution that seems to have the best possible terms may be more of a bandage than a long-term cure.

“A company starting from purpose can take something like a need for increased working capital, break down exactly what that desired funding is aiming to accomplish near- and long-term, and as a result see that an obvious solution—like requesting an extension from $10 million to $15 million on its preexisting facility—isn’t necessarily an optimal solution,” Rinaca says. “When a CFO approaches me with a specific purpose, I can model a utilization under whatever solutions we’ve got on hand, and if what we have on offer isn’t suitable, start building out strategic funding alternatives customized to their region, industry sector, lifecycle stage, and long-term goals.”

Jaime Kennedy, head of Commercial Credit Delivery at Truist, recalls an example of how a purpose-driven approach can generate custom solutions that fit present needs while remaining relevant to future goals. A growth-stage logistics company needed capital to create cold storage facilities. “Whatever form it took would need to minimize the potential of negatively impacting a clearly stated set of long-term goals by avoiding certain terms, rates, and conditions,” Kennedy says.

Kennedy and her team quickly realized offerings like a traditional business loan, commercial mortgage-backed securities, and private equity investments couldn’t meet all of these guidelines. Truist’s solution was to create a joint venture with a specialty real-estate firm that pledged $400 million to the client.

As the joint venture started making acquisitions, Truist provided small loans to help finance the purchases. Once these loans reached $70 million, a larger syndicated loan was then created that helped get the logistics company over the finish line. It was an example of using adaptable, evolving solutions instead of trying to rely on a single solution.

“Taking that approach empowered our team to roll up their sleeves and deliver the exact outcome they wanted by putting together a one-of-a-kind credit solution that blended aspects of commercial and industrial, commercial real estate, and asset-based lending,” Kennedy says.

The process-over-product mindset helps expand time horizons. More often than not, this provides the broadened perspective needed to step back and consider how present business credit solutions could potentially influence key goals five, 10, or even 20 years down the road.

“That’s because the business debt requirements and debt instruments you take on to achieve one benchmark will produce constraints or opportunities for the funding of future ambitions,” says Kennedy. “Understanding that key fact within the unique context of your business circumstances helps us clarify the potential long-term ripple effects of any potential credit decisions made by your company. That clarity strengthens your ability to minimize possible negative impacts to goals that extend across future stages of your business lifecycle.”

In the event you’re faced with a tough choice between multiple standard offerings that would satisfy your short-term needs, adopting a long-term, cause-and-effect perspective on credit solutions can help narrow down your credit options. A Truist relationship manager can work with you to design and find custom solutions, as well as to incorporate those solutions into a long-term credit plan.

“Regardless of your size or stage, treating credit acquisition as a process guided by your long-term goals can help solve for immediate funding needs in a way that strengthens your future plans,” says Kennedy. “By putting exactly that sort of purpose-driven selection process ahead of any one product, a Business Lifecycle Advisory partnership helps get you the customized, short-term credit solutions you need at no expense to the future you want.”