Responding to Financing Requests: A Lender’s Playbook

A financing request on LenderMatrix arrives with the borrower’s answers, a match score against your program, and the criteria that lined up and the ones that did not. What you do in the first two days decides most of what happens next. This is a short playbook.

Open It the Same Day

Borrowers see when a lender views their request. An unopened request signals disinterest, and after two days the system reminds your team about it. Response speed also earns the “Usually responds within a day” badge on your listings, which is calculated from real response times and cannot be bought.

Decide Quickly Whether It Is Yours

The match explanation does the first pass for you. If a hard requirement is missed, decline with a reason. Borrowers see the reason (“outside the area we lend in”, “leverage higher than we offer”) and it tells them where to look next. A quick, honest decline earns more goodwill than silence, and it clears your pipeline.

Reply With a Question, Not a Pitch

The best first reply asks for the one or two things you need to size the deal: a rent roll, a purchase contract, the trailing twelve months. Saved replies in the message composer let your team send a consistent first response in seconds and still personalise it.

Use the Statuses

Contacted, more information needed, underwriting, term sheet: each status change is shown to the borrower in plain language. That is how they know the deal is moving without emailing you to ask. Assign the request to the person handling it so reminders go to the right inbox.

Set Milestones Once the Deal Is Real

Documents received, appraisal ordered, term sheet issued, commitment, closing date. The borrower sees the same checklist. It answers “where are we” before it is asked and keeps a deal from stalling in a status nobody has touched for two weeks.

Send Them to Your Own Process When Ready

If your program has an “apply or upload” link, it appears on the borrower’s application once you have replied. Clicks are counted, so you can see how many requests turn into applications on your side.

Close the Loop

Mark funded deals funded and closed deals closed. Funded outcomes feed the marketplace’s data and your own analytics, and a closed pipeline is the only kind that stays useful.