Archer Wealth

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Private lending has a reputation problem.And while I think parts of the industry may have earned it, I don't think those...
18/09/2026

Private lending has a reputation problem.

And while I think parts of the industry may have earned it, I don't think those parts represent what good private lending looks like.

I've been on both sides of the fence – first as a broker and now as a private lender – and I've seen why some people approach private finance with a degree of caution.

There are lenders promising timeframes they can't realistically meet. Deals where the price seems to change as you get closer to settlement. And terms that look straightforward at the beginning but become a lot less straightforward once the process is underway.

Those aren't problems with private lending. They're problems with how some lenders operate.

To me, good private lending is actually pretty simple.

Be clear about what you can and can't do. Be upfront about what the money will cost. Don't promise a settlement timeframe you can't deliver. And if something changes, explain why.

Private lending is built around flexibility, but that shouldn't mean uncertainty about the lender you're dealing with.

I think the industry earns trust one transaction at a time.

The person assessing a business loan can matter just as much as the lender's policy.I think that's particularly true whe...
16/09/2026

The person assessing a business loan can matter just as much as the lender's policy.

I think that's particularly true when you're dealing with a transaction that doesn't fit neatly into a credit box.

Broker Pulse's latest commercial lending report backs that up. It found 91% of commercial brokers rated credit assessment as an important factor for business loans.

When I was a broker, one of my biggest frustrations was seeing a workable deal run into a wall because the person assessing it was more focused on whether every element fitted the credit box than whether the transaction itself made sense.

It's one of the reasons I wanted Archer to operate differently.

Good credit assessment isn't about finding reasons to say yes to every deal. Some deals shouldn't be funded.

But I do think there's a difference between assessing risk and simply identifying an exception to policy.

Sometimes the real question is whether the strengths elsewhere in the transaction are enough to make that exception a risk worth taking.

That's where experienced credit judgement earns its keep.

New fixed-term loan commitments to small businesses fell 6.9% in the June quarter compared with a year earlier.But there...
14/09/2026

New fixed-term loan commitments to small businesses fell 6.9% in the June quarter compared with a year earlier.

But there's one part of the latest ABS lending data that I think is much more interesting than the overall decline.

Lending to purchase non-residential buildings went the other way, rising 10.1% to almost $2 billion. Lending for industrial buildings was up 12.5%.

That's interesting to me because buying commercial property is usually a fairly significant commitment for a business.

You're not borrowing to solve a short-term cashflow problem. You're making a longer-term decision about where the business operates, what it needs from its premises and, in many cases, where you expect that business to be several years from now.

So against a backdrop of softer small-business lending overall, I think the growth in property lending tells us something the headline number misses.

There are still business owners prepared to make big, long-term commitments when the asset and the opportunity make sense.

That's the part of these numbers I'd be watching.

ASIC says Australia’s private credit market is showing its “first significant cracks”.Those are ASIC chair Sarah Court’s...
11/09/2026

ASIC says Australia’s private credit market is showing its “first significant cracks”.

Those are ASIC chair Sarah Court’s own words, not a journalist looking for a headline.

I think a statement like that will make some brokers cautious about recommending private lenders at all.

I beg to differ.

The right response isn’t to step back from private credit. It’s to get sharper about how you assess it.

Ask where a fund’s capital actually comes from. Ask what happens to that fund if investors want their money back at the same time. Ask whether the lending sits against settled security, or against a project that still has to get there.

They’re straightforward questions. But they can tell you a lot about the lender sitting behind the term sheet.

The brokers who ask this now are protecting their clients, and their own name, before it becomes a problem.

There’s no single “private credit”. There are a lot of lenders doing business very differently, which is exactly why blanket caution doesn’t help anyone.

Apparently private credit is “in trouble” and the market is “cracking”.Meanwhile, Archer Wealth settled just under $50 m...
10/09/2026

Apparently private credit is “in trouble” and the market is “cracking”.

Meanwhile, Archer Wealth settled just under $50 million in August.

Not saying everything is perfect. Far from it. There are definitely more challenges out there and you have to work harder for every deal.

But good borrowers still need money. Good brokers still need lenders who answer the phone. And good deals are still getting done.

A massive thank you to the brokers who continue to trust us with their deals. We don’t take that for granted.

Markets like this probably separate the tourists from the people who actually know how to lend.

There’s a lot of noise out there right now.

We’re just going to keep doing the work.

If you’ve got a deal that’s a bit tricky, time-sensitive or just needs a proper look, send it through. We’re happy to have a crack!

Great to have Pranav Kaarle and Andrew Stevenson up on the Gold Coast representing Archer Wealth at the YBR Aggregation ...
09/09/2026

Great to have Pranav Kaarle and Andrew Stevenson up on the Gold Coast representing Archer Wealth at the YBR Aggregation National Conference 2026.
We love getting out and meeting brokers face to face, hearing what you’re working on and seeing where we can help get a deal moving.
If you’re at the conference, come say hello and have a chat with the team.
Looking forward to a great few days with the YBR network!

Glenn Mitchell Mark Bouris Nicholas Bouris Danny Chronopoulous Neil Peters Peter Bryant

By now, most of us have seen the news of Bathla Group’s collapse. It’s a difficult time for the Group, the employees and...
07/09/2026

By now, most of us have seen the news of Bathla Group’s collapse. It’s a difficult time for the Group, the employees and NSW’s housing pipeline.

And there’s a lesson in it for us all:

In amongst the news, soft presales have been raised as a possible factor in the Group's financial position.

I think that’s a key detail for brokers working with developers.

Presales can give everyone more confidence in a project. But they don't remove settlement risk.

When I look at a development deal, presales tell me demand existed at a point in time. They don’t tell me whether that demand would survive a cost blowout, a finance clause falling over or a valuation coming in under contract price at settlement.

The question I want a broker to ask their developer client is: what happens if 20% of those presales don’t convert? Or if the build takes four months longer than planned?

These aren’t academic questions. They're scenarios I’d want stress-tested on any development deal, before there’s a reason to worry about them.

119,949 financial complaints in a year is a number worth paying attention to.That's how many complaints the Australian F...
04/09/2026

119,949 financial complaints in a year is a number worth paying attention to.

That's how many complaints the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) received in 2025–26 – a new record.

Banking and finance complaints alone jumped 23% to 66,971.

While Archer operates in a different part of the lending market – and these complaints largely relate to consumer financial services – those numbers still got me thinking about something that matters in every lending relationship.

Certainty.

A lot of the deals I see have a deadline attached. There's a settlement approaching, an opportunity the client doesn't want to lose or a financing problem that needs to be solved quickly.

In those situations, a lender saying they can do a deal carries weight.

If the pricing changes unexpectedly, the timeframe slips or the lender can't execute, the broker is often the person left having that conversation with the client.

That's why I've always thought a lender's job isn't just to say yes to a deal.

It's to be clear about what we can deliver – and then deliver it.

When I was a broker, one thing used to drive me mad about lenders.You'd have a perfectly workable deal, but one part of ...
02/09/2026

When I was a broker, one thing used to drive me mad about lenders.

You'd have a perfectly workable deal, but one part of it sat outside the lender's criteria.

Suddenly, you had two choices.

Take the deal somewhere else.

Or start reshaping it to fit the lender.

I never thought that made much sense.

The lender's criteria were starting to dictate the deal, rather than the client's actual funding needs.

That experience stayed with me.

When I started Archer Wealth years ago, it was one of the things I wanted to do differently.

I didn't want a rigid credit box deciding whether a good deal could proceed.

I wanted to be able to look at the transaction itself – the security, the purpose, the risks and the exit – and work out whether there was a sensible way to fund it.

Six years later, that's still one of the things I enjoy most about private lending.

Not every deal fits neatly into a box.

Sometimes that's exactly why it's interesting.

Commercial lending demand isn't slowing across the board. It's moving.Broker Pulse surveyed 388 commercial brokers in Ju...
31/08/2026

Commercial lending demand isn't slowing across the board. It's moving.

Broker Pulse surveyed 388 commercial brokers in June and found some big differences in where they expect loan demand to come from over the next three months.

Mining is sitting at +22 on its loan demand index. Professional services is +21. Accommodation and food services is +15.

Real estate? -3.

Manufacturing? -22.

I don't think the answer is to suddenly start chasing whichever industry happens to be growing fastest.

But I do think there's a lesson here for brokers.

Look at where your pipeline comes from.

If most of your referral partners and client relationships are concentrated in one or two industries, a change in demand can quickly become a change in your settlements.

Diversification isn't only about having more finance products to offer.

It's also about building relationships across different parts of the economy.

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