Worried About Getting A Loan For A Franchise? Here’s Your 2011 Franchise Financing Guideline!
We know you’d rather start the New Year off with a positive attitude about your new role as entrepreneur – let’s demonstrate how you get a loan for a franchise and how franchise financing works in Canada.
Buying a franchise is clearly one of the bigger decisions you’ll make in your personal and business life, and you want to be able to do that with specialized information and assistance to help you succeed.
We would never say there are a large number of ways to finance a franchise in Canada, but there are some tried, tested, proven and recommended methods and strategies and we’ll show you how they work!
You never want to feel you have been pushed or misguided when you are thinking of getting a franchise financing loan. That’s where professional info is always the best solution.
We’re the first to agree that the attractiveness of buying a franchise is a powerful concept – you’re literally buying a proven formula and it’s no secret that you have a better chance of surviving if you purchase a franchise as opposed to starting your own independent business that has no track record.
So when you decide to finance that franchise the ‘ legwork’… if we can call it that, is important. Your goals are threefold actually, you want to be able to successfully purchase the franchise, ensure you have some capital to operate it, and finally, growth is important to your overall success, so you want access to growth capital for your business if you need it.
The majority of franchises are cash flow based, i.e. the restaurant industry, so operating capital and growth capital are not as important in those scenarios. But if you are purchasing a business that has receivables, inventory, and equipment needs, well… be aware that those items need working capital financing.
Franchise financing has three parties to it, yourself as the borrower, the franchisor itself, and of course the finance firm or bank. Generally most franchisors in Canada will determine if you are a qualified candidate for them – that includes a combo of business and or industry experience, as well as some sort of qualified financial credit check on yourself that determines you have the wherewithal to successfully purchase a business.
You only need two things to finance a franchise and get a loan for a franchise. Simple, right. Well those two things tend to be the 2 items that our clients worry about – they are Debt, and Equity. Equity is of course the amount of funds that you personally will put into the business – debt is what you’ll borrow of course.
In Canada the current environment calls for a 30-50% range owner equity infusion… this number in our opinion seems to have crept up over the years. The debt or loan for franchise acquisition comes from predominantly the government. The government!! clients ask? Yes, because the majority of franchises financing in Canada are done under a special loan program called the BIL/CSBF loan program. To qualify you need a business plan, and miscellaneous info required to support your application.
This loan eliminates a huge part of the risk in getting a franchise, because your personal guarantee is limited, thanks to our friends in Ottawa who sponsor the program. Also, and we think this is great; the loan finances things like leasehold improvements, which typically would be impossible to get elsewhere.
Speak to a trusted, credible, and experienced Canadian business financing advisor who will assist you to complete franchise financing successfully. Getting a loan for franchise finance is not as hard as you think, if you have an expert on your side in 2011.