Why a Canadian ABL Business Credit Line is Your New Plan B for a Cash Flow Facility

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately most business owners and financial managers in Canada are familiar with Plan B. Thats the alternative when Plan A didn't work! That's why we think this is an excellent analogy for consideration of an ABL business credit line for your daily operating line of credit and cash flow facility.

Frankly, things have never been hotter in the asset based finance industry ; ABL financing and its subsets ( receivable financing only, equipment financing only ) provide significantly more amounts of liquidity when they are benchmarked against their PLAN A competitor, Canada's chartered banks.

So how is this achieved, when both solutions, the asset based line of credit and the traditional commercial bank line of credit strives to do the same thing? It's simple. Increased borrowing leverage on your assets .Typically this is 90% of your receivables, (not 75% you are getting now) and market value leverage on inventories based on raw materials, work in process and finished goods margins.

The other factor in PLAN B's success is simply that these facilities grow as your business grows, pretty well automatically, as the entire premise of and ABL cash flow business credit line facility is based on the business credit line growing lock step with your sales and assets. The bottom line - the financing decision is made on your sales and assets, not the overall strength and structure of your balance sheet and income statement.

Surprising to many, but not to us, is that some of the largest corporations in Canada are utilizing this type of financing, abandoning commercial bank credit facilities in the process. We don't make any bones about it - if your firm feels its being served well by a commercial bank revolver borrowing facility then by all means stay with that low cost solution. If that isn't the case, well you know the drill... consider PLAN B!

Let's also spend a minute on cost of ABL cash flow business lines of credit. We hate to sound wishy washy but rates are better than, equal to, or more costly than bank facilities. That kind of covers the bases, right? We simply mean to say that depending on the size of your facility, where your company is at in terms of success and failure, and most importantly, who you deal with ultimately determines your cost structure on an asset based line of credit.

The other interesting note to make about our PLAN B solution is that while we're specifically talking about an ABL as just a business credit line the reality is that it can be used for a management buy out, leveraged buy out, acquiring a competitor, etc. That's true flexibility.

So why isn't this type of business financing in Canada more well known? We ponder that pretty well every day. Part of the problem is that the actual players in the industry are limited, some are foreign owned, and some are highly specialized in deal size, industry appetite, etc. But we can assure you an ABL cash flow lender exists in Canada that is suited to your needs.

Current economic challenges in Canada and the world for that matter place a tremendous strain on business capital liquidity. Speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor on why PLAN B can help your firm survive, and grow!