Your business has grown since it borrowed. Your interest rate hasn’t moved.

Compare your rate to what your security supports, not to an advertised number. Secured business lending broadly runs 7.5–9.5%; owner-occupier commercial sits indicatively from around 6%. If you are near the top of a range your security profile does not justify, the problem is structural rather than negotiable. Rate context as at July 2026.

Often, though the meaningful movement usually comes from changing what the facility is secured against rather than from asking for a discount. We model the whole position, not just the facility you asked about.

Break costs on fixed facilities, discharge fees, new application and establishment fees, valuation fees and legal costs. We calculate the net position before you commit and will tell you when the costs exceed the benefit. See what it costs.

On a variable facility, generally yes, within your contract terms. It is also the single most common reason business owners discover they are mispriced. Repricing is not a re-rating of your business. It is usually a portfolio decision that has nothing to do with you.

Sometimes. Consolidation can lower the blended rate and free cashflow, and it can also extend the term and increase total interest. We show you both figures on both terms so you can decide with the whole picture.

Three to four months out. That is enough time to restructure properly rather than roll onto whatever the revert rate happens to be, which is almost never competitive.

Yes, and we do it regularly. A restructure that does not improve your position is one we will not run.

Often, and the tax rule changed on 1 July 2025: the ATO’s general interest charge and shortfall interest charge incurred from that date are no longer deductible (Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Incentives and Integrity) Act 2025). The general interest charge is 11.43% for July to September 2026 and 11.51% for October to December, compounding daily, so a tax debt left on a payment plan is now among the most expensive money a business carries. On our panel, a tax debt under a formal arrangement, smaller than a month’s sales, sitting on clean bank statements behind a strong property position, can be refinanced on a term loan of up to three years, and up to $200,000 of ATO debt can be consolidated into a home loan at 80% of value. Whether the interest on the new loan is deductible follows the ordinary rules for business borrowing, which is a question for your accountant, and the answer for a trading business is usually yes. Checked September 2026; subject to lender assessment.

It can, and the test is specific. The ATO may disclose a business tax debt to credit reporting bureaus where the business has an ABN, at least $100,000 is overdue by more than 90 days, the business is not engaging with the ATO to manage the debt, and there is no active complaint with the Tax Ombudsman about the intended disclosure. A compliant payment plan counts as engaging, so it stops the disclosure even above $100,000, and the ATO gives 28 days’ notice before it reports. Once a debt is disclosed it sits on the file every lender reads, which is why the refinance conversation starts before the notice arrives, not after. Checked September 2026 against the ATO’s published criteria.

Where the security can be separated, yes. A facility secured on its own property with its own mortgage moves on its own; one caught in an all-monies mortgage or cross-collateralised with the others needs a partial discharge from the existing lender, which it grants when the remaining security still covers the remaining debt at its own ratios. That is the sum we run first: which properties can leave, what the outgoing lender keeps, and whether the loans left behind still service. Fixed facilities carry break costs and are usually left to expiry. A refinance that moves one loan and leaves three cross-secured behind can cost more in fees than it saves, and we will say so.

The whole group, because the guarantors are common. A lender adds up every facility the directors stand behind, across the trading company, the property trust and the personal names, and tests servicing on the consolidated position, whether or not the entities borrow separately. What separation does buy you is control of the security: each entity on its own facility with the lender’s security limited to that entity’s asset, so a weak valuation in one does not constrain the others. The file is built to show both views, the group servicing the lender needs and the entity-by-entity security you want, and the structure is decided with your accountant before it is lodged.

Usually not, even though the monthly payment falls. A truck, a hoist or a machine with a five-year life financed over a 25-year property loan is still being paid for twenty years after it has been replaced, and the total interest exceeds the equipment finance it replaced. The structure that reads cleanly to a lender is the one that matches the term to the asset: plant on equipment finance at its market value, working capital on its own line, property debt on the property. Consolidation earns its place where short-term, high-cost facilities (merchant cash advances, unsecured loans at double-digit rates) are strangling cash flow; then the property loan is the cheaper home for a year or two, with a plan to separate again.

Rarely in full at this size, sometimes in part. A company or trust that borrows will have its directors or trustees as guarantors with every mainstream lender; what can be negotiated is the amount (a guarantor liability limited to a fixed sum rather than all monies), the security taken beside it (the trading business alone rather than the family home), and whether a departing director is released when the business refinances. Even a lease-doc facility on a commercial investment property, which skips the personal servicing test, still takes the directors as guarantors; what changes there is that their income is not assessed. If being released is the goal, say so on the first call: it changes which lender the file goes to.