Niche small business lenders is a category applied to individual investors, small investment companies, NGOs that have been set up specifically to fund small businesses and investment companies that use unusual criteria for loan approval.
Niche small business lenders in South Africa offer a variety of different finance packages to small and medium sized businesses. In many instances they are prepared to customise finance products around your specific needs.
A further benefit of working with niche lenders is that they are often prepared to loan finance when formal institutions, such as banks, are not. However, because they are prepared to take a much higher risk and therefore loan money when other institutions will not, they are often significantly more expensive. But again, the charges vary from company to company.
How they differ from the norm
As stated before, each investor is different, but in general niche lenders are prepared to loan capital to companies that may not have sufficient collateral required by banks. They will also engage with businesses that have bad credit ratings. In this case, their biggest concern will be to understand how the bad credit rating came about.
The key to working with niche lenders is to understand that they will want to understand how you and your business operate. Expect them to be very thorough as this is the only way that they can make a final decision about loaning the money.