Field notes
Preparing for a lender meeting as an owner-chair
Lenders read confidence in the papers. Owner-managers who chair their own discussions can still walk in with a board-quality brief.
When you are both borrower and chair, the lender is assessing the quality of your internal challenge as much as the balance sheet. A tidy brief shows that someone has stress-tested the request before the meeting.
Include the purpose of the facility, repayment sources, covenants you can live with, and the downside case if revenue softens by a defined percentage. Avoid optimistic scenarios presented as the base case.
Walk through the brief with an advisor or trusted peer before the bank appointment. The rehearsal is where vague answers about working capital or key-person risk become precise.
Bring evidence of how recent major decisions were made — even a short note from an advisory session helps. It signals that capital requests are not impulsive.
After the meeting, update your own board notes with what was asked and what was promised. That record becomes the start of the next pack, not a file that disappears into email.