Client Fit Policy For Structured Finance

Find The Right Lender Faster. Access 12,000+ Lenders.

AI Lender Match helps business owners, investors, and sponsors identify lenders that fit their deal profile without wasting weeks on cold outreach. Get a smarter starting point for acquisitions, commercial real estate, trade finance, and structured debt transactions.

Financely Group, Engagement Standards, Client Eligibility and Legal Position

Financely Group · Engagement Standards

Who We Work With. And Who We Do Not.

We are a boutique capital markets advisory firm. We do not issue instruments, disburse funds, or arrange capital without compensation. We also know how to respond when former clients misrepresent what we agreed to do, what we did, and why their transaction failed.

What We Are

Understanding Advisory And Speciality Finance

Financely Group is an advisory and debt-side capital introduction firm. We do not lend capital. We do not issue Standby Letters of Credit. We do not disburse loans. We do not hold banking licences. What we do is structure, position, package, and originate transactions across speciality finance verticals, including trade finance, project finance, commercial real estate credit, acquisition finance, commodity-backed lending, and structured private credit.

Speciality finance refers to credit facilities and capital structures that sit outside conventional bank balance sheets. These can include working capital instruments secured against receivables, purchase orders, warehouse receipts, inventory, offtake contracts, or borrower-controlled collateral. They can also include senior project debt underwritten against debt service coverage, sponsor equity, concession rights, completion risk, and repayment waterfalls.

Advisory means we are engaged to think, structure, document, and transact on your behalf. Like a law firm billing partner hours, or an investment bank charging a retainer ahead of a mandate, we are compensated for the professional expertise we deploy from day one. We are not paid only if a third-party lender gives the client the answer they hoped for.

What We Are Not
Not This

We do not issue SBLCs

Financely does not originate, issue, or back Standby Letters of Credit. We are not a bank. Anyone representing themselves as Financely and offering to issue instruments is an impersonator.

Not This

We do not disburse loans

We do not issue loan disbursement letters, term sheets backed by our own balance sheet, or proof of funds on behalf of lenders. The lender disburses. We advise.

Not This

We are not a lender

We hold no banking licence, no lending book, and no proprietary capital to deploy. Sponsors seeking a lender should engage a bank. Sponsors seeking an adviser to position them correctly in front of the right lender can engage us.

Not This

We do not work for free

Our deal assessment fee is USD 500 where offered, credited against the arranger fee on any subsequent full mandate. It is non-negotiable. It is the baseline cost of engaging professionals who know what they are doing.

Impersonation Warning

Fraud alert: Financely Group has been impersonated by bad actors offering to issue SBLCs, MT760 instruments, bank guarantees, proof of funds, and loan disbursement letters. We issue none of these. Any communication from a party claiming to represent Financely and offering to issue instruments, guarantee repayment, or disburse funds directly is fraudulent. Verify all communications through our official domains only.

Scope Of Mandate

What Is Included And What Is Excluded

Our engagement letters define the scope of advisory services with precision. They are not ambiguous. They are reviewed and acknowledged by the client before work commences. If a deliverable was not specified in the engagement letter, it was not in scope.

Included In Scope
  • Deal structuring and credit analysis
  • Financial model preparation, including DSCR, ICR, debt sizing, and repayment waterfall analysis
  • Information memorandum or executive summary pack
  • Lender targeting and curated introductions
  • Term sheet negotiation support
  • KYC and KYT pre-screening and documentation review
  • Lender Q&A management and data room oversight
  • Ongoing mandate correspondence and advisory
Not Included, Ever
  • Issuance of SBLCs or bank guarantees
  • Loan disbursement or balance sheet commitment by Financely
  • Legal advice or solicitor services
  • Direct equity placement by Financely where licensed third-party placement is required
  • Guaranteeing a funding outcome
  • KYC clearance of sanctioned or undisclosed parties
  • Renegotiation of fees after work has commenced
  • Refunds where client misrepresentation caused deal failure
Staffing And Economics

The Professionals Behind Every Transaction

A structured finance mandate is not a phone call and a referral. It is a project staffed by multiple professionals, each with a market rate. The following table represents typical resource deployment on a mid-market mandate. Anyone expecting this output to be delivered free of charge, or contingent only on their deal closing, has misunderstood what they are asking for.

Role Function Market Rate Typical Hours Indicative Cost
Senior Structurer / MD Deal architecture, lender strategy, credit positioning USD 450 to USD 650 per hour 20 to 40 hours USD 9,000 to USD 26,000
Credit Analyst Underwriting, financial ratio analysis, sector benchmarking USD 180 to USD 280 per hour 25 to 50 hours USD 4,500 to USD 14,000
Financial Modeller DSCR, ICR, sensitivity tables, debt sizing, waterfall USD 200 to USD 350 per hour 20 to 60 hours USD 4,000 to USD 21,000
Compliance Officer KYC, KYT, beneficial ownership, source of funds USD 150 to USD 250 per hour 8 to 20 hours USD 1,200 to USD 5,000
Transaction Manager Information memorandum production, data room, lender correspondence, Q&A USD 120 to USD 200 per hour 30 to 60 hours USD 3,600 to USD 12,000
Lender Relations Outreach, lender deck customisation, pipeline tracking USD 130 to USD 220 per hour 10 to 25 hours USD 1,300 to USD 5,500
Indicative Total For A Mid-Market Mandate 113 to 255 hours USD 23,600 to USD 83,500

For context: a mid-market law firm charges a retainer ahead of a financing. An investment bank charges a work fee ahead of underwriting. Management consultants bill from day one. The USD 500 deal assessment fee represents a fraction of the professional cost incurred in preliminary review alone. It is not a barrier. It is a filter that ensures both parties are serious.

Disqualifying Profiles

Clients We Do Not Serve

The following are not edge cases. They are recurring patterns. We document them here in the interest of efficiency, ours and yours.

Disqualified

Sponsors with no equity

A sponsor seeking USD 25 million in project finance with zero equity contribution, no collateral, and a USD 50,000 total advisory budget is not a viable mandate. Lenders require equity in the capital stack. Advisory cannot manufacture equity from a narrative. No equity means no deal.

Disqualified

Trade finance applicants with no collateral

Receivables finance, LC-backed structures, and commodity trade lines require pledgeable collateral, confirmed purchase orders, warehouse receipts, insurance, title control, or offtake contracts. A buyer seeking a USD 10 million LC facility with no underlying assets and no confirmed commodity contract is not a trade finance client.

Disqualified

Broker chains with no principal

We do not work with daisy-chain intermediaries or mandated representatives who cannot produce the end principal on a scheduled call within 48 hours of engagement. If you cannot connect us to the decision-maker and underlying assets promptly, there is no viable mandate to pursue.

Disqualified

Transactions that do not pass KYC or KYT

All mandates are subject to Know Your Client and Know Your Transaction review. Transactions involving sanctioned jurisdictions, undisclosed beneficial ownership, forged documents, or source of funds that cannot be traced to a legitimate commercial origin will not proceed.

Disqualified

Sponsors who misrepresent their deal

If material information, including asset valuations, revenue projections, existing liabilities, project status, ownership structure, or counterparty authority, proves inaccurate or deliberately omitted, the engagement can terminate. Assessment fees are not refunded where the deal was not what the sponsor represented.

Not Accepted

Success-fee-only mandates

We do not accept mandates on a 100 percent success-fee-only basis. Sponsors who cannot commit to a retainer or assessment fee should raise their deal with someone willing to work for free. We cannot, and we do not pretend otherwise.

Contractual Standards

What Constitutes Breach And How We Respond

Our engagement letters are drafted with precision. The scope, fee structure, deliverables, and limitations of our advisory role are stated explicitly. Clients acknowledge and sign before work commences. When a client subsequently acts in a manner inconsistent with those terms, we treat that as a contractual matter, not a customer service issue.

Client-side conduct that may constitute breach or grounds for termination

  • ! Selective data sharing and material omission. Providing incomplete financial statements, concealing existing debt obligations, omitting co-ownership structures, or withholding information about prior lender declines.
  • ! Misrepresentation of asset values or project status. Inflating land values, projecting revenue from contracts that do not exist, or presenting a project as shovel-ready when permitting, EPC contracts, or equity commitments are not in place.
  • ! Demanding deliverables outside agreed scope. Requesting legal opinions, guarantee issuance, balance sheet commitments, direct lending, or equity origination that were excluded from the engagement letter.
  • ! Attempting to renegotiate fees after work has commenced. Withholding agreed retainer tranches, disputing signed invoice terms, or conditioning payment on outcomes that were not guaranteed under the mandate.
  • ! Circumventing introduced lenders. Making direct contact with lenders, investors, guarantors, or arrangers introduced through our network and attempting to close a transaction outside the agreed process.
  • ! Using dispute as a fee-recovery mechanism. Issuing chargebacks, reputational threats, complaints, or letters of claim as leverage to recover legitimately earned fees after the deal fails for client-side reasons.
Reputation And Legal Posture

On Defamation And Selective Disclosure

We are aware that some failed prospects and former clients publish false or selectively framed accounts after their transactions fail due to their own omissions, compliance failures, missing collateral, broker-chain contamination, or misrepresentation. We treat this seriously. We do not treat it passively.

For avoidance of doubt: publishing materially false statements about Financely Group, its principals, its team, or its conduct, whether on review platforms, social media, forum sites, or through direct communication to third parties, may create legal exposure. We document such instances, preserve evidence, and pursue remediation through appropriate legal channels.

The typical pattern is predictable. A sponsor submits a deal with incomplete documentation or misrepresented fundamentals. The deal does not proceed to funding. The sponsor attributes the failure to the adviser rather than to the actual cause, namely their own deal. They then publish a selective account that omits compliance issues, withheld documents, missing equity, failed KYT, or misrepresented asset values.

What such individuals often fail to anticipate is that we retain correspondence, engagement letters, KYC submissions, financial model versions, lender communications, document requests, scope language, invoice records, and mandate notes where legally appropriate. We have the audit trail. A selective public account does not erase that record.

Our legal posture on defamation is not about ego. It exists because our reputation with lenders, family offices, credit funds, and sophisticated counterparties is a commercial asset built over years. We protect it with the same seriousness we bring to mandate execution.

Refund Position

Our Position On Advisory Fees And Refunds

Financely charges advisory fees for professional work. That work can include review, structuring, modelling, document preparation, lender mapping, diligence coordination, negotiations, and execution support. Fees are not success deposits waiting for the client to decide whether the outcome feels pleasant.

If a transaction fails because the client misrepresented the facts, lacked collateral, lacked equity, failed KYC, failed KYT, could not support the repayment source, lost the underlying asset, failed to provide documents, relied on impersonators, or presented a deal that no serious lender would approve, the commercial problem sits with the transaction, not with Financely’s advisory work.

Fee rule: If the assessment concludes the transaction is not financeable, that conclusion is the deliverable. A negative answer is still professional work. Advisory fees remain payable for work performed.

Who We Do Serve

The clients we want

Commodity traders and importers with confirmed offtake or purchase orders seeking working capital, LCs, or SBLC-backed trade lines. Real estate sponsors with equity in the capital stack seeking senior bridge debt, CMBS take-out finance, or mezzanine. Mining, energy, and infrastructure developers with a compliant project vehicle, technical reports, and realistic equity contributions seeking project finance mandates from USD 15 million. Corporate acquirers seeking acquisition finance with identified targets and verifiable EBITDA. Fund managers and family offices seeking structured credit, co-investment introductions, or fund-level leverage. Principals only, with documentation, equity, and a willingness to engage professionally.

Client Fit Assessment

Are You A Fit For Financely?

Answer the following questions honestly. This takes two minutes and will tell you whether we are likely to help you, or whether your time is better spent fixing the transaction first.

01. What is your role in this transaction?
02. What is the approximate transaction size?
03. What equity or collateral can you demonstrate?
04. Are you prepared to pay a deal assessment fee upfront?
05. Can you produce KYC documentation within five business days?
06. Are all material facts about your transaction accurately represented?
07. Have you previously engaged an adviser or lender on this same transaction?
08. What type of financing are you seeking?

Strong Fit

Your responses indicate that you are a well-positioned principal or properly mandated representative with documentation, equity posture, and commercial understanding. Submit your deal summary through our intake form to start the formal assessment process.

Conditional Fit

Your transaction may have merit, but one or more areas require clarification before we can determine whether a mandate is viable. Expect questions tied to documentation, collateral, KYC, KYT, sponsor equity, budget, and prior lender feedback.

Not A Fit At This Time

Based on your responses, we are not the right partner for your current transaction. Fix the transaction fundamentals, documentation, budget, authority, collateral, and compliance position before approaching any structured finance adviser.

Frequently Asked Questions

Questions We Get. Answered Directly.

An advisory firm provides structured professional expertise to help a client access capital. In our case, this involves credit analysis, financial modelling, deal structuring, lender targeting, information memorandum preparation, compliance review, and mandate management. The fee structure reflects the cost of deploying that expertise, not a deposit against a guaranteed result.
A mandate requires meaningful professional work before a lender issues a term sheet. On a pure success-fee basis, the adviser absorbs the client’s documentation risk, disclosure risk, counterparty risk, credit risk, and execution risk with no certainty of recovery. We do not speculate on underprepared mandates.
The USD 500 deal assessment fee covers preliminary review of your transaction, including structural analysis, initial compliance screening, sector benchmarking, and a written assessment of deal viability. If the assessment concludes your deal is not financeable, that assessment is the deliverable.
No. Financely Group does not issue SBLCs, bank guarantees, MT760 instruments, or any other banking instrument. We are not a bank. Any party claiming to issue instruments on behalf of Financely is a fraudster.
Advisory fees are earned through work performed, not contingent on a result that depends on lender credit decisions, market conditions, sponsor compliance, and factors outside our control. If a deal fails because the sponsor withheld material information, failed compliance review, or misrepresented the transaction, the sponsor bears responsibility for that outcome.
Speciality finance refers to structured credit solutions outside conventional bank lending, including receivables financing, supply chain finance, commodity-backed trade lines, project finance, bridge loans, and acquisition finance. These facilities usually require a structured advisory process, not a standard loan application.
Some are not. A small number of former prospects whose transactions did not proceed due to compliance failures, misrepresentation, missing documents, or inability to meet mandate requirements have published selectively framed accounts. We retain complete records and pursue correction where published content is materially false.
A broker connects parties. An adviser provides structured professional work: credit analysis, deal architecture, financial modelling, information memorandum production, KYC oversight, and lender relationship management. We are not paid to forward recycled documents through broker chains.
Breach may include withholding material information, demanding deliverables outside agreed scope, circumventing introduced lenders, withholding agreed fees without contractual basis, misusing work product, or using dispute mechanisms as leverage to recover legitimately earned fees.
Financely is an advisory and debt-side capital introduction firm. We do not conduct equity raises directly where securities licensing or broker-dealer registration is required. For legitimate equity raise requirements, we coordinate with licensed third-party placement agents or investment banks where appropriate.

Submit A Serious Financing Mandate

If your transaction has real documents, real economics, credible counterparties, sufficient budget, and a lawful financing purpose, submit it for review.

Submit Your Deal
Financely provides commercial advisory, structuring, transaction preparation, lender matching, and execution support through appropriate regulated or specialist parties where required. Financely is not a bank, lender, broker-dealer, issuing institution, guarantor, insurer, or deposit-taking entity. All mandates remain subject to diligence, KYC, KYT, sanctions screening, legal review, lender approval, and final documentation. Nothing on this page is legal advice. Contractual rights and remedies depend on the applicable engagement letter, governing law, facts, evidence, and legal review.

About Financely

We Provide Private Credit Trade and Project Finance Advisory for Sponsors and Borrowers

Financely is an independent capital adviser focused on trade finance, project finance, Commercial Real Estate, and M&A funding. We structure, underwrite, and place transactions through regulated partners across banks, funds, and insurers. Engagements are best-efforts, not a commitment to lend, and remain subject to KYC, AML, and approvals.

Request A Quote