Commercial loan brokering is easy to enter and hard to survive. There is no degree, in most states no license for business-purpose lending, and no capital requirement — which means the barrier to entry is close to zero and the failure rate is high. What separates the people still doing this in three years is unglamorous: they know their products, they qualify honestly, and they do not chase every deal that walks in.
What the job actually is
A business loan broker sits between a business owner who needs capital and the lenders who might provide it. On paper that is matchmaking. In practice most of the value you add is diagnostic.
Business owners generally know they need money and have a rough number in mind. They are usually wrong about the product. Someone asking for a $250,000 term loan to cover a seasonal cash gap wants a line of credit. Someone asking for a merchant cash advance to buy a machine wants equipment financing at a third of the cost. Someone convinced they cannot qualify for anything has an SBA profile and has never been told.
Getting that diagnosis right is the whole job. Everything else is paperwork.
The products worth learning first
You do not need to know everything. You need to genuinely know four or five things and recognise when a deal is outside them:
- Term loans — fixed amount, fixed schedule. The default for a defined, one-time need with predictable repayment.
- Lines of credit — draw as needed, pay interest on what you use. Right for working capital and seasonality, and chronically under-recommended.
- SBA loans — the best pricing and the longest terms, in exchange for documentation and a timeline measured in weeks. Worth it on larger amounts.
- Equipment financing — the equipment secures the loan, so approval leans on the asset. Easier to place than most brokers expect.
- Merchant cash advances — fast and expensive, underwritten on deposits rather than credit. The right answer sometimes; the wrong answer often.
Add commercial real estate products once the core set is second nature. They pay well but have their own vocabulary.
Qualifying, before you waste anyone's time
New brokers submit everything and burn credibility with lenders doing it. Four questions resolve most files in about ninety seconds:
- How long have you been in business? Under six months is very hard. Over two years opens most doors.
- What does the business do in monthly revenue? This sets the realistic ceiling more than anything else.
- Roughly where is your personal credit? Above 680 with a couple of years of history changes the conversation entirely — that is conventional territory, not short-term money.
- What is the money for, specifically? The answer usually names the product.
A business owner who does not fit today is worth keeping. Tell them what would change the answer — three more months of history, a cleaned-up balance sheet, one more quarter of consistent deposits — and put a reminder in your calendar. Brokers who do this have a pipeline in year two. Brokers who do not are still cold calling.
The part nobody warns you about: lender access
Product knowledge is useless without somewhere to place the deal. Individual lenders want production history before they onboard a broker, which is the same chicken-and-egg problem every new broker hits. The realistic options are to spend a year building relationships one at a time, or to work through a network that already has them.
Loanable's partner program gives you 150+ lenders from your first file, covering the full product range rather than just short-term money. Your deal gets shopped across the network instead of sent to the one funder that happened to sign you.
Getting paid
Broker compensation is famously opaque. Common problems: splits that vary by product so you cannot predict what a deal is worth, tiers that only pay well above volume you do not have, and monthly settlements that make it impossible to verify what the deal actually earned.
Loanable's structure is a flat 50/50 split of net profit on every funded deal, the same across all product types, with earnings visible per deal in your dashboard and ACH payouts every Monday with no minimum. Whether that beats your current arrangement is easy to check, which is rather the point.
On licensing
Business-purpose lending is regulated much more lightly than consumer lending, and in most states you can broker commercial deals without a specific license. Most is not all. California's lending law reaches some commercial activity, and several other states have registration or disclosure requirements that apply depending on what you do and how you are paid. If you plan to make this a business rather than an occasional referral, confirm your own state's position with the regulator or an attorney. Treat anyone who waves the question away entirely as a poor source.
A realistic first ninety days
Pick two products and learn them properly. Work one lead channel consistently instead of four sporadically. Expect your first month to produce conversations rather than closings — the lag between starting and your first funded deal is usually six to ten weeks, and most people who quit do so at week five.
Not sure whether you want to broker files or simply refer them? The difference is worth understanding before you commit to either.
Get lender access from your first deal
No production history required, no fees, and approval inside 24 hours.
- 50/50 net profit split on every funded deal, across every product type
- Paid every Monday by ACH, with no minimum payout threshold
- 150+ lenders competing for the files you send
- Approved within 24 hours — no fees, no contracts, no volume commitment
Apply to the Loanable partner program — it takes about two minutes, and you will have a referral link and a partner dashboard the day you are approved.
Loanable is not a lender. We connect businesses with funding providers, and terms vary by deal.