The five reasons, and why they are not about you
A bank's commercial credit model is built around recoverable security and filed history. It asks what it could seize if you stopped paying, what your personal file says about you, and what your accountant said about the business two tax years ago. Most small businesses fail at least one of those tests through structure alone.
Collateral first. Leased premises, financed equipment and receivables that evaporate when trading stops leave a bank nothing to secure against, and an unsecured commercial loan is a product most branches simply do not offer below a certain size.
Then the score. Bank term lending and SBA programmes typically look for 650 or better on the owner's personal credit. A 580 does not say the business is unsound; it says the bank's model will not look past it.
Then time. Two years of filed accounts is a common requirement, so a profitable business in its fourteenth month is declined for not yet existing on paper.
Then the deposit pattern. A model tuned for smooth monthly revenue reads a contractor paid in progress draws, a landscaper with a quiet January, or an agent paid on closings as unstable — when the pattern is simply how the trade is paid.
And finally the category. Some banks decline restaurants, trucking, or cash-heavy trades as a class before opening the file. The decision is made about your industry, not about you.
What a revenue-based funder reads instead
Bank statements, not balance sheets. Six months of business deposits show whether money reliably arrives, how much, and how consistently — which is the question a lender actually needs answered and the one a bank's model approaches sideways.
That is why the same business is declined by a bank and approved by a funder in the same week. Nothing about the business changed. What changed is which evidence was allowed to count.
It is also why the reason you were declined usually predicts the alternative. Declined for lumpy deposits? Repayment that moves with revenue fits. Declined for a truck-shaped balance sheet? Finance the truck as a truck. Declined for a thin file at fourteen months? Funders underwriting deposits generally want six months, not twenty-four.
The trade is price. Revenue-based funding costs more per dollar than the bank loan you were declined for. It exists because it reaches businesses the bank will not, in days rather than weeks — and that is the honest comparison, not a rate against a rate.
Why the answer is different for your industry
The five reasons recur, but they weigh differently by trade, and so does the fix. A restaurant is usually declined on category and asked about card settlement; a manufacturer on work-in-progress ratios and asked about purchase orders; a medical practice is rarely declined at all and is really solving a reimbursement lag.
We have written the specific version for fifteen industries. If yours is among them, that page will tell you exactly what a bank saw in your file and what a funder will look for instead — which is more useful than the general case, and usually shorter.
If your industry is not on the list, the pattern above still holds: identify which of the five you were declined on, and it points at the product built to read past it.