How Should a Fintech Use Its Own Performance Data to Renegotiate a Debt Facility?

For growing fintech lenders, renegotiating a credit facility is both an art and a science. Most companies approach it as a purely financial negotiation — rate, advance rate, covenants, prepayment terms. But the strongest negotiating position rarely comes from spreadsheets alone.

It comes from performance data.

A fintech we worked with had completed almost two years under its first institutional debt facility. When they entered the facility, the business was young: limited cohort performance, prototype servicing capabilities, and unproven cash-on-cash curves. Two years later, everything was different — repayment curves were stable, losses were materially lower than modeled, servicing maturity had increased, and data engineering had improved dramatically.

The question was: How do you turn that into negotiating leverage?

1. Frame the Business as “De-Risked” — Cumulatively, Not Incrementally

Lenders don’t respond to isolated improvements (“losses are down 20%”).

They respond to integrated risk reduction:

• stronger cash-on-cash curves

• consistent covenant compliance

• operational maturity and servicing discipline

• clean reporting

• improved capital structure

• hundreds of millions of repayment data points

The argument is powerful because it shows stability not as a coincidence, but as a trajectory.

2. Bring Comparables — But Tie Them to Your Data

Yes, the market evolves. Yes, rates change. But the strongest case isn't “other lenders offered us better pricing.” The strong case is:

“Here’s the evidence that our actual portfolio risk is lower than what your original underwriting assumed.”

That reframes negotiations from “we want cheaper money” to “we want pricing aligned to the actual risk.”

3. Use Stress Tests to Prove Resilience

Lenders live in downside scenarios. Help them see your downside clearly:

• Show how much losses would need to increase to trip covenants.

• Show that even severe stresses keep the facility within its advance-rate cushion.

• Show how your dynamic underwriting or collections levers respond to stress.

If you give a lender a stress-test pack they can take straight to investment committee, you’re now negotiating as a partner — not a counterparty.

4. Package the Narrative for Their IC (Do Their Job for Them)

Most lenders won’t build the IC memo you wish they would.

So give it to them:

• Executive summary of de-risking

• Portfolio performance charts

• Advance-rate cushion analysis

• Stress scenarios

• Pricing comps

• Clear asks (and why they’re justified)

The easier you make it, the more likely your terms move.

The Outcome

A facility negotiation grounded in real performance data is radically different from one grounded in “market chatter.” When a fintech can show its business is fundamentally de-risked — and that the lender’s downside is narrower than originally modeled — concessions become logical, not emotional.

That’s the power of turning your own data into a negotiating asset.