I have started four businesses over the last 13 years. In that amount of time, you can learn a lot of lessons about business. One of the biggest is how to get credit for a business without my personal guarantee. From experience I know that having business debt on your personal record does make your debt to income ratio a sight to behold. Now, there is one thing I did learn about lenders.

Lenders want to lend money. It’s the only way they make money for themself. But, they don’t want to give away money. For a lender to have enough confidence in an individual or business to lend money, they need some type of assurance that they are going to receive their payments. Where do lenders get their data to make a decision?

Lenders use credit reporting agencies to check on the reputation of a business or individual to see what is their history of credit. they can’t see into the future so their only measure of success is the past. The problem is that most businesses do not have a separate credit history. That’s why the lenders insist on having a personal guarantee for their loans. Do you know where a lender gets their information about you or your business?

There are different credit reporting agencies for business and personal information. We know there are at least three for personal history, but in the business realm, there is one main organization that most lenders use, Dun and Bradstreet. For you to be successful in obtaining independent business credit, you must have an excellent credit rating with Dun and Bradstreet. And what is detemines a great credit rating and D&B?

They have a rating system with a range of 0 to 100, with 100 being the best possible score. Their system is based on the number of days late that payments are reported from their participating lenders. The score of 80 means that every payment is made on time. A score higher than 80 means you pay everything earlier than the due date with 100 meaning that you pay everything before it is even invoiced. A score below 80 means you have a few late payments and it goes down from there. Can you guess what score you need?

To be able to get separate credit, you will need a score of 75 or higher or lenders won’t even consider you for a non-guaranteed loan. But, how do you build credit for your business?

There are steps that you can follow to get a acceptable score with Dun and Bradstreet. It begins with getting listed with D&B and getting creditors to report their experience about you to them. With enough history for your company, you should be able to get the credit you need to succeed. All you need to know is which companies will help you as you build your company’s credit.

Greg Walding has written a report containing names, contacts, websites and phone numbers with concise steps to building business credit without a personal guarantee. It can be found at http://www.buildingmycredit.com/gettingcredit.htm

When it comes to business finance, there are many flexible options available such as leasing, factoring, regular loans, etc. However, all these options lack the attribute that we are discussing in the present article. Though sometimes all the above are the cheapest options for financing equipment purchases, manufacturing and internal or foreign sales, the truth is that they fail to provide a solution when time is an issue.

If you are about to complete a good deal and a machine broke up and you lack the funds for repairing, you can’t wait for a leasing contract to be signed in order to replace the equipment and if the delivery is close enough, you probably won’t have enough time to request a regular business loan either.

Fast Options for Business Finance

There are mainly two finance alternatives when time is an issue: Fast Business Loans and a Business Line of Credit. Which one is the best choice depends on many factors such as: time available, amount needed, recurring, credit situation, income expectation, etc.

Fast Business Loans require no long credit verifications. The money you need can be obtained quickly with little paperwork. However, further paperwork and credit checks may be needed after the money is delivered in order to close the deal on better terms. Business Lines of Credit on the other hand, take more time to be approved. But once you’ve a line of credit agreed, you’ll be able to borrow the money you need at any time, return it the way you want (with certain limits) and borrow more money as many times as you need it up to the credit maximum.

As regards to the amount, business lines of credit will provide you a smaller amount than regular business loans but higher amounts than fast business loans. Moreover, business lines of credit provide a recurring source of money which eliminates the need of applying again whenever you need more cash.

Approval for both types of loans is determined by the business’s credit situation. However, fast business loans have fewer requirements than business lines of credit. Nevertheless, approval ratio is high enough for both kind of loans and unless your business has had mayor financial delinquencies in the past approval is almost a certainty in both cases.

The Interest Rate charged for fast business loans is higher due to the fact that there are not so many requirements and fewer credit checks. This implies a greater risk for the lender that is compensated by higher rates and higher costs. However, the difference won’t be more than 3 or 4 percentage points.

Finally your income expectations will also determine which loan option is best for you. Given that fast business loans carry higher interest rates and fixed monthly installments, unless your current and future income guarantee that you’ll be able to repay the loan, you will probably do better with a business line of credit that offers more flexibility when it comes to the repayment plan.

Mary Wise, a professional consultant with twenty years in the financial field, helps people in the process of securing personal loans, mortgage, refinance or consolidation loans and preventing consumers from falling into the hands of fraudulent lenders. You can visit her site and get aid for Business Loans regardless of your credit. If the link doesn’t work, just copy badcreditloanservices.com and paste it in your browser’s address bar.