As a Canadian business owner and financial manager you need a certain amount of skill and knowledge to successfully source and negotiate a Canadian equipment leasing strategy. Equipment financing in Canada can be simple or complicated – the business decisions you make around the financing and acquisition of your asset involves a number of factors which have to do with the credit quality of your firm, the way in which you will account for the lease, as well as any business or legal considerations around the transaction.
From the viewpoint of your lessor, we can probably safely say they are most interested in simply getting paid back, so the ability to present your firm as a reasonable credit risk will allow you to get the asset and amount you want, approved, and, as what seems most important to many of our clients, you will get what we would like to call a ‘competitive' rate and structure.
You also want to know if you are making the right financing decision as opposed to considering an outright purchase or some type of term loan for your asset financing. So at the end of the day you want to know what type of lease and benefits are available to your firm, and who is the best ‘lessor partner’ for this particular transaction.
We meet with many clients who spend countless hours, if not longer sometimes in talking to a large number of lease companies on any given transaction. What they don’t understand (other than wasting their time) is that lease companies in Canada are organized by asset and credit quality, and many lease firms are funded in different manners, and in some cases offer only one type of lease, which is not necessarily the lease financing you might need for your asset finance decision.
So how do you wade through all this clutter and noise? It might be proper to consider working with an expert who knows the Canadian lease industry, and is a trusted, credible and experienced advisor to your firm in this area.
When we meet with or get a call from clients who have been out in the market ‘shopping' for a lease, it becomes very clear that they appear very disorganized and have spent an inordinate amount of time already. Also, they are looking for ‘all' the ‘benefits’ of lease financing in Canada, when in reality only a certain number or even a limited number of those benefits might apply to their transaction. Countless firms recount stories of having paid too much for a lease or having focused on an option that ultimately had limited benefit to their firm. Again, understand the market, or work with someone who does.
Your ultimate goal in a lease financing strategy in Canada is to ensure you have, at the start, outlined what makes sense for your firm regarding the lease structure and the appropriate partner firm you need to work with.
When you are soliciting lease pricing you should do that selectively with firms who are interested in your overall credit quality, asset type, and dollar size of your transaction. We tell clients to get a ‘market sense' of the type of lease financing that is available as the industry has the ability to use jargon that can be considered confusing to say the least!
One strategy you can use is to outline a basic lease financing request and solicit a number of bids – by clearly showing who your firm is, the asset you wish to finance, the dollar value of the transaction, and the type of lease you require (there are two types), you can quickly eliminate a lot of wheat from the chaff!
In summary, understand what key benefits you want to achieve from a Canadian Equipment Leasing transaction get a sense of who can deliver on those options, and ensure you have a level playing field for lease firms you might want to work with.
