Refinance Business Loans & Expensive Debt

How businesses end up here

Almost never through bad management. A tax bill lands, a big customer stretches from thirty days to seventy, or a contract needs funding before the first invoice clears. A short-term facility solves the immediate problem at a price that seemed acceptable against the alternative of losing the work.

Then trading tightens for a quarter, or a second facility goes on to help service the first. Within a year the account is being debited by three lenders and most of the week's takings are gone before Wednesday. It's one of the most common situations in Australian business finance, and it's fixable far more often than owners expect.

The first number to check is your payout figure

This is the part almost nobody gets told, and it changes everything about whether a refinance makes sense.

Most short-term facilities are priced as a fixed fee or factor rate, not an interest rate. Borrow $100,000 at a factor of 1.28 and you owe $128,000 from day one. There is no reducing balance in the way a home loan has one. The $28,000 doesn't shrink because you've been paying diligently for five months.

So the common assumption, "I've repaid about half, so I must owe about half", is usually wrong. A facility an owner believes has $55,000 outstanding can quote a payout of $85,000, because most or all of the unearned fee is still in there. Some lenders offer a partial rebate on early payout. Plenty offer none.

Why we start with written payout letters

Not an estimate, not the number in the app, and not your reading of the contract. A dated payout figure in writing from each lender. Until those are on the table, any conversation about refinancing is guesswork. Getting them is the first thing we do, and it costs you nothing.

What a refinance actually changes

Worth being straight about this: refinancing expensive debt often doesn't reduce the total amount you owe by much. What it changes is the pressure, and for most businesses that's the thing that was killing them.

Three or four debits become one. You get your cashflow back into a shape you can forecast.
Daily or weekly becomes monthly. The single biggest relief for most businesses: the money stays in the account long enough to run the business with.
A short term becomes a longer one. The same debt spread over twenty-four months instead of seven is a materially smaller weekly burden.
Sometimes a lower rate. Where the business has recovered since the original facility, a prime-tier lender will often price it far better.

The routes out

There's rarely one answer. In rough order of how well they usually work:

Property equity. If you or the directors own property, a secured facility is by a wide margin the cheapest and cleanest exit. This is the single biggest lever available and it's worth checking first every time.
Consolidation into a prime-tier term facility. One lender, one monthly repayment, a defined end date.
Debtor finance. For businesses invoicing other businesses, this is often the real structural fix: funding that flexes with your ledger instead of a fixed debit that doesn't care how your month went.
Asset refinance or sale-and-leaseback on plant and equipment you already own outright, to release capital against it.
Extending the term with your existing lender. Sometimes the simplest option, and often nobody has asked.
An ATO payment plan. Not a loan, but it frees up cashflow, and it's frequently the highest-leverage move on the table.

Refinancing ATO debt

One of the most common reasons businesses come to us. An ATO balance sitting over a business is expensive in general interest charges, it blocks other lending, and it creates an obligation with a creditor that has more power than any other.

Moving it onto a structured facility with a fixed term and a known end date is ordinary work here. Lenders assess the size of the debt and whether your trading cashflow can comfortably service it, not the existence of the debt itself. Where a payment plan is already in place and being met, that generally helps rather than hinders.

When refinancing isn't the answer

Sometimes it isn't, and we'd rather say so than write a facility that makes things worse. Broadly there are three positions a business can be in:

Ready now	Trading has recovered, statements are clean for a few months. Consolidate into a single longer-term facility and get the pressure off. This is the most common case and it usually goes smoothly.
A few months away	Needs runway first: stop taking on new facilities, get an ATO arrangement in place, clean up the statements, then refinance from a stronger position. We'll tell you what to do and check back in.
Not a finance problem	Where total debits already exceed gross margin, more borrowing postpones the issue and adds to it. We'll say so plainly and point you toward a turnaround or restructuring adviser who can actually help.

Being told which of these you're in, honestly and quickly, is worth more than another approval.

What we'll need from you

Twelve months of business bank statements: every trading account.
A written payout figure from each existing facility, dated. We can help you request these if you'd rather not deal with the lenders directly.
An ATO integrated client account statement, where there's a balance owing.
Your ABN and director ID.

That's usually enough for us to model the restructure and come back to you with real numbers rather than a sales pitch.

Common questions

Will refinancing actually save me money?

Sometimes, and sometimes not. It depends entirely on the payout figures. What it reliably improves is cashflow pressure: fewer debits, less often, over a longer period. We'll show you both numbers, the total cost and the weekly burden, so you can decide on the facts rather than the pitch.

Can a merchant cash advance be refinanced?

Often, but the arithmetic needs checking first. Because the full fixed amount is usually still owed regardless of how much you've repaid, you may be refinancing a much larger figure than you expect. We get the payout in writing before recommending anything.

I have three facilities running at once. Can they be consolidated?

Frequently, yes. That's one of the most common jobs we do. It depends on the combined payout figure against what your trading will support. Where it works, going from three daily debits to one monthly repayment transforms how the business runs.

Will this affect my credit file?

Not at the enquiry stage. We assess your position and approach lenders informally first. A formal credit enquiry only happens once you've seen terms and told us to proceed.

What if I'm already behind on repayments?

Tell us early rather than late. It narrows the options but it doesn't always rule out a restructure, and the earlier we see it the more room there is to work with. If a refinance genuinely isn't viable we'll say so and point you to someone who deals with the next step.

Refinance expensive business debt