We are the people who know which door to knock on
Keystone Capital Group is a commercial finance intermediary. We do not lend our own money — we place your file with the lender whose credit box actually fits it, across ninety-two programs and every major category of business and real estate capital.
Why a broker rather than a bank
A direct lender has one credit box. If you fit it, they say yes. If you do not, they say no — and they are not obliged to tell you that a lender three miles away would have said yes on the same file.
That asymmetry is the whole reason intermediaries exist. Every lender has an appetite: a preferred industry, a preferred size, a minimum time in business, a view on tax liens, an opinion about restaurants. None of that is published. It lives in the heads of people who submit files to them every week.
We submit files every week. So when a nine-month-old trucking company with a 610 score and a tax lien walks in, we are not guessing about who might fund it — we know which three capital sources have funded that exact profile recently, and which fifteen will waste your time and leave a hard inquiry behind while doing it.
What we actually do with your application
The work happens in three places, and none of it is glamorous.
Structuring. Most borrowers ask for the wrong product, which is completely normal — you run a business, not a credit desk. Someone asking for a $250,000 term loan to cover a receivables gap usually wants a line of credit or a factoring facility, and would be significantly worse off with what they asked for. Getting this right before anything is submitted is the single highest-value thing we do.
Packaging. Underwriters decline files they cannot understand. A clean, complete, correctly framed submission with the explanation for the weak quarter already in it gets approved at rates a disorganised file never sees. This is unglamorous document work and it is worth real money to you.
Placement. One file, sent to the specific lenders who fit — not blasted to forty. This protects your credit, and it means the lenders who do see your file take it seriously because they know we do not waste their time either.
How we get paid
There is no cost to you to apply, to be reviewed, or to look at the offers we bring back. On most transactions we are compensated by the funding source on closing. Where a fee applies directly to you — which happens on certain SBA packaging and larger structured transactions — it is disclosed in writing in your term sheet before you sign anything.
We tell you this plainly because the alternative is that you wonder. A broker's incentive is to close, and you should know that when you weigh our advice. The counterweight is that a business that outgrows us and comes back for an acquisition loan in five years is worth far more than a single expensive advance today — which is why we will tell you to wait when waiting is the right answer.
Who we work with
Companies from three months old to thirty years old. Credit scores from 500 to 800. Transactions from $10,000 to $50 million. Owner-operators with one truck and sponsors with eight-figure development projects. Restaurants, staffing firms, medical practices, contractors, importers, landlords, manufacturers, congregations buying their building.
The common thread is not size or sector. It is a real business need with a real plan behind it. If you have that, there is very likely a program for you — and if there genuinely is not one yet, we will tell you what would need to change.
Four commitments we will hold to
We are paid to place you correctly, not quickly
A broker who steers every client into the highest-commission product does very well for about eighteen months. We would rather arrange a $180,000 SBA loan today and finance your acquisition in four years than take a larger fee now on money that damages you.
The situation determines the product
We do not open with what we sell. We open with what you are trying to accomplish, because the shape of the problem — how fast, how long, how certain, secured by what — is what actually narrows ninety-two programs down to two.
Unwelcome answers, delivered anyway
"Your file is not ready" and "this product would hurt you" are things we say out loud. They cost us transactions. They also mean that when we do say a deal is good, it means something.
Your data is not the product
One application, placed with the specific lenders who fit your profile. We do not sell your information to lead aggregators, and you will not get twenty cold calls the day after you apply.
A keystone is the piece that lets the arch carry weight
It is the last stone set and the one everything else presses against. Remove it and the structure that looked solid a moment ago comes down.
Capital does the same job in a business. It is rarely the thing that makes a company good — the customers, the operators and the product do that. But it is very often the thing that lets a good company carry the weight it has already earned: the order that is bigger than the bank account, the building the landlord just put up for sale, the competitor whose owner is finally ready to retire.
Getting that piece in the right place, at the right time, in the right shape, is the entire job.