Commercial Finance Broker Melbourne — Director-Led Commercial Lending Specialists

Why commercial lending needs a specialist, not a call centre

Residential lending is largely standardised: verified income, standard valuations, comparable policy across lenders. Commercial lending is the opposite. Every element of a commercial transaction is negotiated — the loan term, the amortisation profile, the covenants, the review events, the security package, the pricing. Two lenders can look at the same warehouse purchase and produce approvals that differ by hundreds of dollars a week and years of loan term, purely because of how the deal was presented and who it was presented to.

Franchise brokers built around residential volume rarely live in this world. Their systems, accreditations and instincts are calibrated for payslip-verified home loans. When a complex file lands — a company borrower with three entities, a partially-leased mixed-use building, a developer needing staged drawdowns — it gets handed sideways or squeezed into a residential-shaped process. The result is predictable: slow declines, conservative offers, and structures that create problems at the first annual review.

Our practice is built the other way around. Complex is the core business, not the exception. Before IFG, Brian held senior relationship management roles in business banking across the full spectrum of commercial credit — traditional business loans through to complex property development, construction funding and sophisticated cash-flow lending. Frank's background spans SME banking and self-managed super fund lending. Between them sits 45+ years of combined banking experience and, more importantly, a working knowledge of how bank credit teams actually think — because they've been the ones writing the credit papers.

What we arrange

Commercial lending at IFG spans six practice areas. Each has its own dedicated page with the depth it deserves:

• Commercial property finance — owner-occupied premises, investment property across retail, office, industrial and mixed-use, and commercial refinancing. Matching the asset class to the right lender's actual appetite is the single most important step, and it's where we start.
• Construction finance — progressive-drawdown facilities for home builds, knock-down-rebuilds, owner-builders and commercial construction, with end-value LVR assessed upfront rather than discovered late.
• Development finance — townhouse and small apartment projects, land subdivisions and commercial developments, typically 2–10 dwellings or equivalent. Presales requirements, funding tables and feasibility presentation are where these deals are won or lost.
• Business finance — working capital, overdrafts, invoice finance, trade finance, acquisition funding and business loans structured around your actual cash-flow cycle.
• Equipment & asset finance — vehicles, trucks, earthmoving, cranes and specialist plant across construction, transport, civil and manufacturing, through lenders who understand each industry's asset profile.
• SMSF commercial lending — commercial property inside self-managed super, including the related-party leaseback structures that let your business own its premises through your fund. (Note: following the recent legislation change, new SMSF borrowing for residential property is banned from 1 July 2027 — our SMSF practice is commercial-focused. Read our guide to the change.)

Where a scenario doesn't fit a standard box at all — unusual income evidence, credit history events, private-lender territory — see our self-employed and alt-doc lending practice.

How commercial credit is actually assessed

Understanding what sits behind a commercial credit decision is the difference between a strategic application and a hopeful one. Four factors carry most of the weight:

None of this is visible on a comparison website. It lives in lender credit policies that shift quarter to quarter — which lender has appetite for industrial this quarter, who has tightened on retail, who will look at a 55% ICR shortfall if the sponsor is strong. Tracking that appetite is a core part of what we do.

The IFG approach: strategy first, lender second

Every commercial engagement follows the same discipline we learned in banking:

• 1. Full-picture review. The transaction, your entity structure (personal, company, trust, SMSF), your existing facilities, your accountant's structuring intent, and your three-to-five-year plan. A loan that's right for this purchase but wrong for your next one is the wrong loan.
• 2. Structure before product. Which entity borrows. What security is offered — and just as importantly, what is deliberately kept out of the security net. Cross-collateralisation is the most common structural mistake we unwind for new clients.
• 3. Targeted placement. We shortlist lenders whose current, actual appetite matches your asset class and scenario — then submit to one, with a professionally packaged application that reads like the credit papers we used to write. A shotgun approach damages your credit file and your negotiating position.
• 4. Negotiated terms. Pricing, term, covenants, review conditions and valuation instructions are negotiated, not accepted. This is where a banking background pays for itself.
• 5. Settlement and beyond. We coordinate valuers, solicitors and accountants through to drawdown — then diarise your facility reviews and rate expiries. Commercial facilities need active management; ours get it.

This is what we mean by strategic rather than transactional. Sophisticated borrowers don't choose us because we can access lenders — every broker can. They choose us because we structure transactions the way credit teams want to see them, and because the person doing that structuring is a director with 20+ years in banking and finance, not a processing queue.

Commercial lending across Melbourne's north-west

Our office is in Coburg North, and Melbourne's north and west is our home ground: the industrial precincts of Campbellfield, Somerton, Tullamarine, Keilor Park and Airport West; the commercial strips of Coburg, Brunswick, Essendon and Moonee Ponds; and the growth corridors out to Craigieburn and Greenvale. We finance the warehouses, workshops, showrooms, medical suites, childcare centres and mixed-use buildings that make up this economy — and we regularly act for clients purchasing commercial property across greater Melbourne, Geelong and interstate.

Local matters in commercial property more than most realise. Lender appetite is postcode-aware: industrial in the northern corridor is currently well supported, secondary retail strips are assessed street by street, and owner-occupier demand around the airport precinct has its own dynamics. Because we work these areas constantly, we can usually indicate likely lending appetite for a specific property before you make an offer — often the most valuable fifteen minutes of the whole transaction. Call us before you sign anything.

Illustrative scenarios

Composite examples of the work — details generalised; every scenario differs and outcomes depend on individual circumstances.

• The owner-occupier upgrade. A manufacturing business leasing in Campbellfield wants to buy its premises. We structure the purchase in the trading entity's related property trust, evidence serviceability from three years of financials plus the rent it already pays itself, and place it with a lender offering owner-occupied terms at 80% — keeping the directors' homes out of the security package.
• The partially-leased investment. An investor contracts on a mixed-use building in Brunswick with one vacancy. Rather than accept a punitive vacancy assessment, we present a leasing strategy with agent evidence, negotiate the valuation instructions, and structure a facility with a review event tied to the new lease — converting a marginal decline into an approval.
• The first development. A builder client moves from single dwellings to a four-townhouse site in Glenroy. We build the funding table, model the presale requirement against current lender policy, and stage the facility so drawdowns match the build program — with the exit refinance planned before the first slab is poured.

Refinancing and restructuring existing commercial facilities

Some of our most valuable work never involves a purchase. Commercial facilities age badly when left unattended: margins drift upward at annual reviews, covenants written for a smaller business start to pinch, and security packages accumulate until every asset you own is pledged against every dollar you owe. If your facilities haven't been formally reviewed in the last two years, the odds are good that money is being left on the table.

A commercial refinance review with IFG examines four things. First, pricing — whether your margin still reflects your risk profile, or just your loyalty. Second, structure — whether each facility is secured by the right asset, or whether cross-collateralisation has quietly tied your home, your investment property and your business premises into one bundle that limits every future decision. Third, covenants and review conditions — the clauses that don't matter until the year they suddenly do. Fourth, fit — whether your current lender still has appetite for your industry and asset class, because appetite moves, and being a strong borrower at a lender who no longer wants your sector is a poor negotiating position.

Sometimes the outcome is a refinance to a new lender on materially better terms. Just as often it's a renegotiation with your existing lender — armed with a genuine alternative, which changes the conversation entirely. Either way, the review costs you nothing, and we'll tell you plainly if your current arrangements are already right. That honesty is why clients stay with us for decades rather than transactions.

Considering a residential refinance as well? Our refinancing practice applies the same structure-first discipline to home and investment lending.

Why boutique beats franchise for commercial borrowers

Franchise networks are excellent at what they're built for: high volumes of standardised residential lending. Commercial borrowers have different needs, and the differences compound:

• Continuity. You work with the same director from enquiry to settlement and through every review — not whoever picks up the queue. Commercial relationships are measured in decades; ours are built that way.
• Credit-side fluency. We write applications the way credit papers are written, because that's the career we came from. Deals are approved on presentation as much as on numbers.
• No volume quotas. We're not paid to move fast and standardise. Complex files — multiple entities, unusual assets, imperfect histories — are our core work, not exceptions to be triaged out.
• Whole-of-panel independence. Our panel deliberately spans major banks, non-banks, private and specialist lenders — matched to your scenario, not sprayed at it. Under the Best Interests Duty our obligation is to what's right for you, and we'd hold ourselves to that standard regardless.