NMEF Announces Strategic Joint Venture With Oaktree to Accelerate Growth in FMV Leasing Platform
June 10, 2025JUNE 10, 2025, NORWALK, CT – North Mill Equipment Finance, LLC (“NMEF” or “North Mill”), a leading commercial equipment lessor located in Norwalk, Connecticut, today announced a new partnership with funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. (“Oaktree”), a global investment firm with deep expertise in credit and asset-backed finance. The collaboration launches a joint venture designed to grow NMEF’s fair market value (FMV) equipment leasing platform, alongside Oaktree’s investment in the venture.
The combined capital commitment from Oaktree and NMEF will support the funding of $350 million in FMV equipment lease originations initially, with additional capital capacity available to continue funding the venture.
This partnership combines NMEF’s established origination network and servicing capabilities in the equipment leasing space with Oaktree’s institutional capital base and investment team. This new extension of NMEF’s platform will focus on FMV leases across a wide range of essential-use equipment including construction, medical, logistics, and manufacturing assets.
“This marks a major step forward in our efforts to deliver flexible, value-driven leasing solutions to the market,” said David Lee, Chairman and CEO of North Mill Equipment Finance. “We’re excited to work with a partner like Oaktree who shares our long-term vision and brings deep understanding of asset-backed investing.”
Under the terms of the agreement, NMEF will originate and service all transactions through their national network of independent originators and vendors. North Mill will also invest alongside Oaktree in the venture.
“We’ve built a strong and scalable platform, and this partnership allows us to bring it to a broader investor base,” said Lee Bergeron, Senior Vice President of Structured Products at NMEF. “Together with Oaktree, we’re well-positioned to meet growing demand for flexible equipment financing solutions.”
Paul Cheslock, Vice President of Structured Products at NMEF, added, “This collaboration gives us the capacity to do more of what we do best—helping businesses acquire the equipment they need with creative and sustainable financing options.”
From Oaktree’s perspective, the partnership is a natural fit with their investment strategy. “We’re pleased to partner with North Mill to support the next phase of growth for their FMV platform and bring long-term value to their customers,” said Rana Mitra, Managing Director at Oaktree. “We are excited to partner with an extremely high-quality originator and servicer like North Mill as we continue generating attractive asset-backed finance exposures for our investors,” said Brendan Beer, Portfolio Manager for Oaktree’s Asset-Backed Finance and Structured Credit strategy.
About North Mill Equipment Finance (NMEF)
NMEF is a national, premier lender who works with third-party referral (TPR) sources to finance small to mid-ticket equipment commercial leases and loans ranging from $15,000 to $3,000,000 and up to $5,000,000 for investment grade opportunities. NMEF accepts A – C credit qualities and finances transactions for many asset categories including but not limited to medical, construction, franchise, technology, vocational, manufacturing, renovation, janitorial and material handling equipment. NMEF is majority owned by an affiliate of InterVest Capital Partners. The company’s headquarters are in Norwalk, CT, with regional offices in Irvine, CA, Voorhees NJ, and Murray, UT. For more information, visit www.nmef.com. One of NMEF’s controlled affiliates, BriteCap Financial LLC, is a leading non-bank lender providing small businesses with fast, convenient financing alternatives such as working capital loans since 2003 from its main office in Las Vegas, NV. For more information, visit www.britecap.com.
About Oaktree
Oaktree is a leader among global investment managers specializing in alternative investments, with $203 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2025. The firm emphasizes an opportunistic, value-oriented, and risk-controlled approach to investments in credit, equity, and real estate. The firm has more than 1,200 employees and offices in 25 cities worldwide. For additional information, please visit www.oaktreecapital.com.
QuickBooks Capital Continues to Grow
June 8, 2025Intuit’s small business loan program, QuickBooks Capital, is continuing to grow. It generated $35M more revenue in FY Q3 2025 than it did over the same period last year, according to the company’s latest earnings report. Considering Intuit’s total quarterly revenue was $7.8B, its funding business, a small percentage of the total in comparison, is only mentioned in detailed on occasion.
QuickBooks Capital benefits from having a funding button in the widely used QuickBooks Capital software, a feature so effective that they were effectively the sixth largest online small business lender that AltFinanceDaily tracked in 2024. Its two main products are a term loan and a line of credit.
North Dakota Law Regulates “Alternative Financing” as a “Loan”
May 30, 2025The state legislature in North Dakota recently passed House Bill 1127. This bill made a simple amendment to a 1970s-era law called the Money Brokers Act (“MBA”).
Despite its name, the MBA is not limited to brokers. It is the primary law regulating consumer and commercial lending in North Dakota. It applies to any person engaged in the act of arranging or providing loans. Such persons are called “money brokers” in the MBA.
This amendment adds a two-sentence definition of the word “loan”. When this amendment takes effect, the MBA will define “loan” as follows:
“Loan” means a contract by which one delivers a sum of money to another and the latter agrees to return at a future time a sum equivalent to that which the person borrowed. This includes alternative financing products as identified by the commissioner through the issuance of an order.
Is this is a big deal? Yes. Here’s why.
Until now, the MBA has always defined the term “money brokering” to include the act of providing “loans” but has never defined the term “loan”. As a result, forms of business financing that are not typically considered loans – such as factoring or revenue-based financing (also sometimes called “merchant cash advance”) would not be subject to the MBA. Adding this new definition of “loan” to the MBA creates significant risk that alternative forms of business financing will become subject to the regulatory burdens impose by MBA.
Those burdens are significant. The MBA requires money brokers to obtain a license from the North Dakota Department of Financial Institutions (“DFI”). The MBA also caps the maximum amount of fees and charges that can be impose by a money broker at a rate of 36% per year.
With this new definition, the North Dakota Department of Financial Institutions (“DFI”) can now issue an order designating any financing product as a loan subject to the MBA. Does the DFI intend to regulate revenue-based financing? That’s unknown at this time. The Commissioner of Financial Institutions provided a memorandum to the legislature stating that the new definition would allow DFI to ensure that North Dakota’s citizens “will have access to new lending products, without sacrificing safeguards”. It is possible that the Commissioner is intending to focus on consumer financing products and not commercial financing. Even if that’s the case, that’s small comfort.
There is still a problem with this law because the first sentence of the definition is simply too broad. It states that a “loan” includes a transaction with the following two features:
1. There is a contract by which a sum of money is delivered to another.
- A typical revenue-based financing is structured as a purchase of a merchant’s future revenue at a discounted purchase price. The purchase price is a sum of money delivered to the merchant.
- Invoice factoring transactions also involve a delivery of funds in the amount of the face value of the invoice minus a discount and/or a reserve.
2. At a future time, the person receiving that money agrees to return an “equivalent” sum.
- In revenue-based financing, the merchant agrees to deliver the purchased amount based on an agreed-upon percentage of the merchant’s revenue stream. Arguably this is a “sum of money” equivalent to the purchase price advanced to the merchant.
- Factoring is a bit more complicated. In recourse factoring, a factoring client sometimes is required to repurchase an invoice from the factor if the invoice is not paid on time. The repurchase price is based on the face value of the invoice. Arguably this is a “sum of money” equivalent to the face value of the invoice minus a discount and/or a reserve.
Even if the DFI does not order that revenue-based financing or factoring are loans, a North Dakota court could take the position that the definition of “loan” is now so broad that these products are already loans under the revised MBA. No DFI order is needed.
If a North Dakota court concludes these products are now subject to regulation under the MBA, including its 36% rate cap, then this opens the door for North Dakota businesses that obtain financing to sue any provider that imposes charges that effectively exceed that rate cap.
It’s not clear whether the North Dakota legislature understands what it just did. This amendment was part of a legislative package that was primarily focused on data security. The addition of the “loan” definition would be difficult to find if you weren’t looking for it. House Bill 1127 passed with almost unanimous support. Did all those legislators understand that this law could drive away products that offer working capital to businesses that badly need liquidity and don’t have access to a bank line of credit? I doubt it.
Does this mean that providers of alternative financing should stop funding in North Dakota? That’s a business decision. We’ll certainly be watching to see if the DFI provides any guidance on any kind of “alternative financing” product it considers to be a loan. But providers of revenue-based financing and factoring should start thinking about whether they might need an MBA license North Dakota and whether they can live with the MBA’s 36% rate cap.
According to the North Dakota legislature’s website, this change in the MBA is likely to take effect on August 1, 2025. That gives you some time to think about whether North Dakota is still a viable market for your financial products.
Texas Commercial Sales-Based Financing Bill Gets Last Minute ACH Ban Amendment
May 27, 2025The Commercial Sales-Based Financing bill that passed through the Texas House of Representatives two weeks ago has now also passed through the Senate, but with a rather controversial amendment. In the Senate version, passed yesterday, and viewable on the right hand side of this document, sales-based financing providers would not be allowed to automatically debit a merchant’s account unless they have a “validly perfected security interest in the recipient’s account under Chapter 9, Business & Commerce Code, with a first priority against the claims of all other persons.” That means any sales-based funding (like an MCA or revenue-based financing loan) would be prohibited from debiting merchants automatically unless they were in true first position. And not just a first position MCA, but first position on all arrangements the merchant has altogether. AND it would have to be perfected in accordance with this statute.
The Senate Amendment:
CERTAIN AUTOMATIC DEBITS PROHIBITED.
A provider or commercial sales-based financing broker may not establish a mechanism for automatically debiting a recipient’s deposit account unless the provider or broker holds a validly perfected security interest in the recipient’s account under Chapter 9, Business & Commerce Code, with a first priority against the claims of all other persons.
Since the main difference between what the Senate and House passed is that one sentence prohibiting automatic debits, they have until June 2nd to decide which version of the passed bill is final.
Sales-based financing is broad. While the term encompasses sales-based purchase transactions (MCAs), firms like Walmart and PayPal engage in loan-based sales-based financing. Both firms, for example, are registered sales-based financing providers in the state of Virginia.
The Texas Senate amendment language is new. It does not resemble anything passed in a state commercial financing disclosure law to date.
An estimated 10% of all sales-based financing in the US takes place with Texas-based businesses.
Ready Capital’s Q1 and Fintech Footprint
May 20, 2025Ready Capital originated $343M in SBA loans in the first quarter of 2025. It did an additional $44M in non-SBA small business loans in the same period.
“While we anticipate moderation in volume ahead, we view recent policy updates from the SBA as constructive towards reinforcing the program’s long-term strength and integrity,” said Thomas Capasse, CEO of Ready Capital. “Ready Capital continues to deliver performance above industry benchmarks. Our 12 month default rate was 3.2% versus the industry average of 3.4% and our five year charge-off rate has now declined for the fourth consecutive quarter, reflecting the strength of our credit and servicing practices. Additionally, our 12 month repair and denial rate reached a historic low.”
While Ready Capital is known as the fourth largest SBA lender and by far the largest non-bank SBA lender, the company is also among the biggest fintech innovators in the space.
- 2019: Acquired Knight Capital and iBusiness Funding
- 2023: Launched LenderAI
- 2023: Acquired non-SBA assets and talent from Fountainhead SBF LLC
- 2024: Acquired Funding Circle US
- 2024: Inherited Funding Circle’s funding partnership with eBay
On the last point above, eBay brokered more than $100M in small business funding in 2024 alone, with more than half of that believed to have gone to Funding Circle US, now Ready Capital via iBusiness Funding. On eBay, iBusiness Funding offers term loans up to $500k with repayment terms up to 7 years.
The rest of eBay’s funding volume goes to an MCA provider named Liberis.
Need a Bank to Fund MCAs? You Can’t Operate Without One
May 12, 2025
“I learned back in the early 2000s when merchant processors started to offer merchant cash advances, that was the first time I ever heard of MCA,” said Christian Sanchez, Relationship Manager for the National Deposits Group of Dime Private & Commercial Bank. Sanchez, who’s been in banking for 25 years, understands MCAs in their current iteration from a unique vantage point in the ecosystem. Dime, for example, is a full‑service commercial bank based in New York that today provides a variety of customers, including MCA funding companies, with services like checking accounts, wire access, and ACHs.
Sanchez worked with his first MCA client in 2021 and immersed himself in their business and the industry. When he got them onboarded and saw how well it worked out, he knew there was something there. By early 2024, he set out to find a place where he could meet many MCA funders at once and attended the AltFinanceDaily CONNECT MIAMI conference that January. It was almost right afterward that he started a new role at Dime, and he has been actively looking to serve MCA companies ever since.
“Through the connections I made—I attended Broker Fair in New York last May and from there my access to the industry has been great and I continue to meet contacts, and one contact leads me to another,” Sanchez said.
It’s more than just a basic account that Dime is offering to MCA funders.
“Our platform is designed to give you the tools that you need to run your MCA funding company,” he said, “coming in from the standard online banking access, being able to view your accounts, run reports, extract information to your accounting system… We give you access to our ACH platform, which allows you to set up your payment collections, and based on how your deal is structured with the merchant, you can set those up with the different recurring schedules.”
Dime customers can also continue to use their own third‑party ACH processor if they choose.
Banking, believe it or not, can be one of the most overlooked considerations in running a funding company. A bank’s underwriting team has to understand the business, be comfortable with it, approve it, and be prepared to handle the flurry of activity—yet, even when they do, things may not always run smoothly. To that end, Sanchez said that even if someone already has an MCA banking relationship elsewhere and doesn’t want to switch to Dime, being fully onboarded with another bank as a backup is a smart plan. The time‑sensitivity surrounding things like wire deadlines and daily ACHs is critically important in the industry. It’s crucial not to wait until it’s too late for that Plan B, since onboarding and risk underwriting are neither instantaneous nor guaranteed.
“Obviously I would love to be the primary and having the biggest share,” Sanchez said. “But at the end of the day, it’s business. If I can be part of your business and work together, then I fulfill my need.”
Credit facilities, investors, and syndicates may also require an MCA funder to have a backup bank ready to go as a condition of working together. They might even require a Deposit Account Control Agreement (DACA), which Dime is equipped to put in place.
“[A DACA] is a tri‑party agreement between the MCA funder, the lender, and the bank,” Sanchez explained. “And what happens is this is a way for a lender to ensure that the MCA is doing what they say they were going to do…”
Dime customers need not be located in New York, but those who want to drop in on their banker can do so at the Midtown Manhattan branch or set up a meeting with Sanchez himself.
“A lot of times what I can assure you is, if you look for me, you can find me, whether it’s by phone or we might be meeting somewhere but I’m constantly available.”
True to that promise, Sanchez said he will once again attend Broker Fair in person on May 19 in New York City.
It’s important to note that, as a bank, there is still a rigorous underwriting process and not every company may be approved.
“It’s absolutely amazing to see how Dime is willing to work with MCAs,” he said. “We have a clear understanding of the industry, the risk that’s involved with it, but the bank has embraced it instead of running away.”
Getting Backdoored? Put Your Mark on the Docs
April 30, 2025Christina Duncan was once working on a renewal as an MCA broker when things turned south. Her client suddenly received so many calls with offers for funding that they had to turn their phone off.
“[The client] eventually reached out to us via email and basically said, ‘Hey I don’t know what’s going on but these people are saying they’re with you and they have my bank statements. I’m really concerned,'” Duncan said.
Duncan’s renewal had been backdoored. It was hardly the first time, and she was hardly the only victim. As many in the industry often complain, it has become a growing trend in which a broker submits a client’s deal and it somehow slips out the back door into the hands of a third party. The broker then ends up competing on their own deal, or they lose out on it completely. And that’s how many brokers see it—as something that happened to them. But there’s also the business owner who is now left wondering how their data ended up in the wrong hands and what to do about it.
In the above example, Duncan tried to help the client learn how an unauthorized party came into possession of those bank statements, but she was simply hung up on and blocked. It was a dead end.
“So those are the situations that we encounter every day and it’s tough to navigate,” she said.
Born in San Jose, CA and based in San Francisco, Duncan has seen it all. She started in equipment financing more than 15 years ago and gradually shifted into brokering MCAs. When complaints about backdooring began to crop up, everyone had their own opinion on the cause.
“I’ve seen people get caught up on just trying to point the finger or use backdooring as an excuse for their lack of success,” Duncan said, “But the reality is that it is very real. I’m a part of the DailyFunder forum. I see people talking about it all the time but there just hasn’t really been an efficient way to deal with it.”
But then she came up with a solution: Aquamark, a defensive watermarking tool that differs from other tactics employed across the industry to reduce the risk of backdooring. It allows brokers to permanently stamp the documents as having originated from them.
With the assistance of AI and a small team, Duncan left the broker world behind to go full-time into developing the technology, which she said can be used on all the documents in the process.
“It’s not just the bank statements, it’s tax returns, your application,” Duncan said. “What’s happening is it’s someone who has access to these submissions, these packages, and it very well could be internal, someone on your team, it could be a lender and the lender doesn’t know that…”
So it’s not only a problem, but one that can happen at multiple levels in the process. The Aquamark tool, still in its early days but already being used by funders and brokers, can apply custom-branded watermarks onto PDF files with ease. On the one hand, she said, the tool had to be designed to prevent AI from removing the watermarks, and on the other hand it had to work with encrypted statements. When she solved both challenges, she knew she had something. Now, brokers simply upload their documents through the portal, and the platform returns them in seconds.
“By design, I built this in a way that it’s very lightweight and it’s self-service,” Duncan said. “You don’t really need me to do anything and more importantly we’re not storing anything. So essentially you’re uploading your documents and I’m giving it back to you. There’s no logs, there’s no history, none of that is happening behind the scenes.”
The company’s mission statement is a simple one: “Prevent Backdooring. Fund More Deals.”
As Duncan explains, lenders might not even know that a deal they’ve received has been backdoored because the submitting party doesn’t always make it obvious where they got it.
“It’s tough, especially in this environment with all the competition, cost to acquire customers are through the roof, and you lose that,” she said. “It sucks. And honestly it’s so frustrating because aside from it being [how brokers make their money], for the merchants it puts that bad taste in their mouth in the industry. And it’s very real. And so I just wanted to come out with something that—again, the MCA industry gave me a lot and this just feels like a way to give back, as cheesy as that sounds.”
How to Prepare for Outside Syndicators
April 29, 2025David Roitblat is the founder and CEO of Better Accounting Solutions, an accounting firm based in New York City, and a leading authority in specialized accounting for merchant cash advance companies.
To connect with David, email david@betteraccountingsolutions.com.
There’s a clear gap of knowledge in our industry, and how merchant cash advance businesses need to prepare themselves to receive outside money in investment or syndication.
Whether you’re seeking your first institutional investment or scaling to eight-figure funding rounds, the preparation required isn’t just about having good portfolio performance—it’s about having the financial infrastructure responsible investors need to see before forking over money to you. Not knowing how to prepare that for them can cost you months of delays or even kill promising funding opportunities entirely.
I’ve seen too many MCA shops operating under a misconception. They believe that the impressive Google Sheets presentation showing their advance volume, daily collection rates, and merchant performance will be sufficient when courting serious investors.
Sometimes that’s enough. When you’re looking to raise money from friends and family, you have flexibility. These investors typically accept basic performance reports showing advance volume and collection rates, might not request detailed merchant-level financials, and generally won’t demand formal audits. Basic spreadsheets might suffice at this stage when you’re raising up to about $1 million in capital to fund your advances.
The financial documentation requirements escalate dramatically when you need more than that.
Once you move beyond self-funding or friends and family money into the realm of raising $5-10 million or more, investors won’t accept your homegrown reporting systems or month-end bundle accounting—they want audited financials and proper transaction-level documentation.
Sophisticated syndicators expect a professional CRM system tracking all merchant relationships, detailed default modeling, GAAP-compliant accounting systems that properly account for income recognition on merchant advances, and as investment amounts increase, audited financials become non-negotiable.
Auditors don’t accept shortcuts in the MCA space. They require transaction-level detail with recognized income on each advance, estimated defaults by cohort, and precise documentation of collection performance. They’re specifically looking for attempts to bundle or obscure individual merchant performance – a common practice in some MCA shops that raises immediate concerns with institutional investors.
Here’s what most MCA operators don’t realize: Getting your books audit-ready isn’t a quick fix. It’s a process that can take several months to update historical advance and collection records, 3-4 months for a first-time audit (always longer than subsequent audits), and additional time for any remediation of collection documentation. In total, you’re looking at potentially 9-12 months from financial disarray to audited statements. That’s an eternity in the fast-moving MCA world when a funding opportunity appears.
If you even think you might seek significant outside capital within the next year, start preparing now. Implement proper merchant tracking systems immediately. Ensure all bookkeeping follows GAAP principles for advance recognition. Consider getting audited financials before you need them.
Yes, this requires upfront investment, but put it in perspective: If you’re raising $5 million to fund your advance portfolio (often just the starting point), the cost of proper financial infrastructure is minimal compared to the capital you’ll secure and the acceleration in your timeline.
The most successful capital raises in the MCA industry aren’t just about having a great portfolio performance – they’re about being ready when opportunity knocks. Don’t be the MCA provider explaining to eager investors why they need to wait a year while you get your advance and collection records in order. The most valuable asset in fundraising isn’t just your merchant performance – it’s being prepared to prove it immediately.
