Car Finance for a Bookkeeper business owner

The challenge in this deal was in the following respects:

1. The client purchased the car during the busiest and most difficult time of year to organise finance due to lender skeleton staff and higher volume – the Christmas/New year period
2. She purchased the car on Saturday 21 December, right before the Christmas shutdown and the deadline to pick up the car before she would forfeit her holding deposit was Tues 31 December 
3. The loan submission cut off for most lenders to settle before the end of the year was Friday 20 December i.e. the day before the car was purchased
4. The trade-in vehicle was valued at less than the outstanding loan so that means it had negative equity. When this is the case, most lenders require full documentation (2 years of financial statements) 
5. The client coincidentally had several large business and personal expenses just prior to purchasing the car which meant she was in a tight cashflow position and couldn’t contribute more than the $1,000 holding deposit.

The challenge didn’t stop us from pursuing to find a solution for our client.

The car had negative equity which means most lenders would require full documentation. This would take too long given the imminent Christmas shutdown and delivery deadline of 31 December so we had to find a lo doc solution.

We immediately picked up the file as priority and workshopped it with our lender panel. Several lenders were either unable to deliver on time, or consider lo doc, or both.

However we made a special request to her current lender Pepper who agreed to finance the new car and the negative equity from the existing car with an affordability declaration only – this is where the client (her business) simply declares it can afford the loan, there is no income verification in the form of financial statements involved.

Fortunately the client was able to take delivery of her car on 31 December.

All of this was managed by our broker whilst she was travelling overseas!