Financing Programs | 6 min
Joint Venture Programs for Lease Companies & Brokers
Sentry views the marketplace as much more collaborative than competitive. Under our JV Programs, Sentry partners with equipment lease/finance companies and larger lease brokers (“JV Partners”) to enable them to increase their transaction volume, expand their financing capabilities, and/or diversify and leverage their equity investment dollars.
Sentry’s JV Programs are among the most successful in the industry and give our JV Partners several key strategic advantages in the marketplace. Our JV Programs provide our JV Partners with a simple, convenient, and profitable way to fund both the debt and equity components of their lease transactions. Sentry approaches every transaction with a view to forging a mutually beneficial, long-term, strategic relationship with each JV Partner.
Why Partner with sentry?
Teaming up with Sentry expands your capabilities.
By partnering with Sentry, you will:
- Grow your business more rapidly;
- Expand your funding capacity;
- Reduce your overall risk and exposure through diversification of your lease portfolio;
- Offer your customers a broader range of financing structures and services;
- Create true leverage in investing your equity capital;
- Generate a disproportionate share of upside on your equity investments;
- Retain tax benefits on certain transactions;
- Add the knowledge base and skills of Sentry to your team:
- Obtain the benefit of best practices in lease structuring, documentation, and marketing and sales management; and
- Receive access to equipment management and remarketing capabilities, capital investment and other financial resources.
Our finance product offering is extensive and we will work with you to deliver the best lease or finance structures for your customers.
Are We The Right Fit?
Sentry is actively seeking additional JV Partners who desire to better serve their customers, to grow their companies, and to diversify and leverage their own portfolios.
Qualified JV Partners will typically:
Have direct relationships with creditworthy customers;
Desire to maintain and safeguard their relationships with their customers;
Want a partner who can provide debt and equity financing, and (where desired) other services and support; and
Want to diversify and leverage their own equity portfolios.
Sentry is also willing to simply purchase lease and finance transactions from leasing companies and brokers.
Sentry also collaborates with larger leasing companies, bank leasing companies, captive finance companies, and other institutional partners seeking investors or buyers of their lease transactions or portfolios for one reason or another (e.g., credit limits, asset concentrations, restrictions on equity investments in certain asset types).
What Does Sentry Offer?
Each Sentry JV Program is tailored to meet the specific requirements of our JV Partner and its customers. The essence of Sentry’s JV Program is for you to focus on what you do best (originating financing transactions and managing your customer relationships), and for Sentry to focus on what we do best (transaction pricing and structuring, documentation, funding, servicing and remarketing).
Our primary goal is to enhance your structuring and funding capabilities so that you are able to increase the volume of leasing and financing to your customers and to diversify and leverage your equity dollars.
Our Role:
is to assist you in meeting the equipment financing needs of your customers, including assisting with transaction pricing and structuring, preparing or reviewing the lease documentation, and providing the debt and equity financing.
Your Role:
is to originate equipment leasing and financing transactions and to manage the relationships with your customers.
What Additional Benefits Will I Receive By Partnering With Sentry?
- Offer your customers the full spectrum of equipment leasing and financing products;
- Compete more effectively for quality relationships;
- Increase your transaction volume;
- Protect your customer relationships;
- Expand your financing capabilities;
- Leverage your equity investment dollars;
- Obtain the benefit of best practices in lease structuring, documentation, and marketing and sales management;
- Receive access to equipment management and remarketing capabilities, capital investment and other financial resources; and
- Select from a menu of services provided by Sentry.
What would our relationship look like?
Sentry's roles in a lease company/broker finance program can include:
- Proposal structuring and pricing,
- Preparation of proposals and lease documentation,
- Funding the debt portion and some or all of the equity portion of true lease transactions (also known as FMV, “equity,” operating, and tax leases, among other names),
- Equipment evaluation, management, and re-marketing,
- Servicing (including lease payment invoicing and collections, and sales/use/property tax registration, billing, collection and remittance), and
- Accounting and reporting.
Your roles can include:
- Originating equipment lease and financing transactions;
- Maintaining customer relationships;
- Providing your portion, if any, of the “equity” investment; and
- Collaborating with Sentry on re-marketing the equipment at the end of the initial lease term.
Through Sentry’s JV Program, our JV Partners can participate in two to ten times as many true lease transactions as they otherwise could with the same “equity” dollars. Occasionally, transactions are too large or are outside of the comfort zone of our JV Partner, in which case Sentry may fund the entire transaction.
On transactions where we co-invest on the “equity,” the net residual value is shared commensurate with the risks and rewards, generally on a pro rata basis.
Depending on the overall structure of the particular JV Program and how the responsibilities are shared between Sentry and our JV Partner, our JV Partner is often paid an upfront lease origination fee.
What's To Keep Sentry From Stealing My Customers?
Sentry has been offering its JV Program for almost 40 years. We consciously protect the relationship that our JV Partners foster with their customers. You remain the primary and direct contact with your customers, which allows you to manage the sales and origination processes with Sentry assisting in the background.
This arrangement, combined with the ability to participate in a greater number of transactions as well as transactions of greater size and complexity, means that you may expand the number and depth of your customer relationships.