For commercial & business finance brokers — Australia-wide

The guy in the background
who makes you look like
the smartest broker in the room.

26 years of commercial banking and brokering experience — available to you on a monthly retainer. You bring the deals. I give you the knowledge, the tools, and the frameworks to write them like a veteran.

26Years in commercial banking & finance behind every deal
100%Your commission. Every dollar of it — I don't take a cut, ever.
$0Out of pocket. Your client pays the service fees — not you.
Grow your commercial pipeline with an expert behind the scenes — more deals, faster approvals, stronger referrals.
Bank-trained credit thinking Risk assessment from the approver's perspective You stay visible — I stay invisible No lock-in contracts
The principle that changes everything

It's not what you say. It's how you say it.

Every broker can gather documents and submit an application. What separates the ones who get deals approved quickly — and get called back — is how they present the deal. Specifically: addressing risks upfront, with mitigants, before the banker even thinks to ask.

"A well-written credit paper does the banker's job for them. They read it, they respect you, they prioritise your deals — and they support them going to credit. That's how you build a commercial broking business."
For the lender

You earn their respect

Bankers and credit managers see hundreds of submissions. A deal that identifies the risks, explains the mitigants, and proposes the structure stands out immediately. They prioritise it. They support it. They call you back.

For the client

You become the expert

When you ask the right questions — about deposit structure, environmental risk, license transferability, security — your client realises you know what you're doing. That's when they refer their network to you.

For your business

Settled deals, faster

Brokers make money from settled deals — upfront commissions and trails. A quick decision locks in your client and secures your income. Every week a deal sits waiting costs you money. Good submissions move faster.

What this looks like for your business
More deals written. Faster approvals. A commercial pipeline that builds on itself.
Commission income Deals settled
Deals settled grow from 1 per month to 8 per month. Commission income grows from $8,000 to $72,000 per month over the same period.
Each settled deal builds your trail book. Each well-written submission earns you a reputation with lenders. Each client who experiences your expertise refers their network. The pipeline compounds — and it starts with the first deal you write properly.
$72k
Month 12 commission
8
Deals per month
The one chance principle

You only get one chance to put a deal to a lender.
Don't waste it.

The most expensive mistake in commercial finance isn't a declined deal — it's a poorly prepared deal that could have been approved. A credit manager who reads a weak submission forms an opinion about the broker, the client, and the deal all at once. That first impression is very hard to reverse.

Without Steve

Broker submits without addressing the obvious risk flags. Credit manager identifies three concerns, forms a negative view, declines or comes back with onerous conditions. Deal falls over. Client goes elsewhere. Commission gone.

With Steve

Deal is assessed through the credit manager's lens first. Every green flag is highlighted. Every red flag is addressed with a mitigant or a structure that gives the lender comfort. Credit reads it, respects it, approves it.

The $45,000 story. When I was a banker, I inherited a client from a colleague who had simply ticked "acceptable" for every risk criteria — never actually assessed the deal. When I did a proper risk assessment, the client's risk grade improved enough to justify a 0.75% margin reduction. On $6M in lending, that's $45,000 back in the client's pocket every year. And the banker had been collecting that extra margin for years because no one had bothered to look properly. That's what a thorough credit assessment is worth.
What the retainer actually buys

Three layers of support. One monthly fee.

The retainer isn't a credit writing subscription. It's access to 26 years of commercial lending experience — working quietly behind you on every deal.

Layer 1 — Commercial intelligence on demand
The retainer
Call me before you commit time to a deal. I'll tell you the deposit requirement, the likely lender appetite, the risk flags to address, and whether it's worth pursuing — in 20 minutes. That one call can save you 10 hours on a deal that was never going to get up.
Deal viability assessment before you start
Equity and deposit structure guidance
Risk identification — green flags and red flags
Lender matching and appetite assessment
Deal workshopping and strategy
Honest advice — including when to walk away
Layer 2 — The tools that make you look like a veteran
Included in retainer
Deal-specific due diligence checklists. Information request emails your client receives under your name. Discussion paper frameworks. Risk assessment templates. The infrastructure of a seasoned commercial broker — available from your very first deal.
Deal-specific due diligence checklists
Client-ready information request emails
Discussion paper templates and frameworks
Risk assessment question sets by deal type
Credit preparation fee email templates
Full access to the Commercial Broker Toolkit
Layer 3 — Execution when you need it
Per-service fees — passed to your client
When you want me to actually write the deal — discussion papers, full credit submissions, financial analysis, feasibility modelling — I scope it, price it, and you charge it to your client. Your commission stays untouched. Your client pays for the expertise that got their deal approved.
High-level discussion papers
Full credit submissions
Financial analysis and commentary
Construction feasibility and funding tables
Serviceability worksheets
Deal management through to settlement
How it works in practice

A home loan broker's first commercial deal.
$7 million. Scrap yard. Melbourne.

She was a home loan broker. She'd never written a commercial deal. A client came to her with a $7M acquisition — a scrap yard business and the industrial land it sat on. Here's what happened.

$7M business & property acquisition — a broker's first commercial deal

Car scrapping business + 30,000m² industrial land, Melbourne VIC — home loan broker, first commercial deal

1

The call — 30 minutes of experience worth hours of research

She thought her client needed a 20% deposit. The first thing I told her: on a deal like this — industrial land, operating business, contamination risk — you're looking at 30–40%. That one conversation reshaped the entire deal structure before she'd spent a minute on the application. It also protected her — and her client — from approaching a lender with a structure that was never going to work.

2

The infrastructure — her client thought she'd done 50 of these

I sent her a deal-specific due diligence checklist covering six key risk areas: environmental contamination, land and title, licences and regulatory compliance, business financial history, vendor and deal structure, and buyer experience. I also sent her a client email template to send under her own name requesting the information. Her client received a professional, bank-standard information request on the first contact. She looked like exactly the right person to be handling a $7M industrial deal.

3

The execution — scoped, priced, charged to the client

Once the due diligence came back and the deal stacked up, I offered to write the Discussion Paper. The fee was scoped, she presented it to her client as a credit preparation fee, and the client paid it. Her commission stayed entirely untouched. She'd gone from "I've never done one of these" to presenting a bank-standard discussion paper to lenders — on her first commercial deal.

The referral effect. When a broker shows a commercial client that level of expertise and process on their first interaction — the right questions, the right structure, the right documentation — that client doesn't just proceed. They refer. Their accountant. Their business partner. Their landlord. Commercial clients travel in networks of other commercial clients. One well-handled deal becomes five.
Steve Keefe
About Steve Keefe

I spent 26 years learning what makes a deal get approved.
Now I teach brokers how to use it.

I started in banking. I learned how credit managers think, how risk grades work, how a margin reduction of 0.75% happens because a banker was lazy and no one checked. Then I became a commercial broker — and used everything I'd learned on the other side to write deals that moved faster, converted better, and built better client relationships.

I stayed invisible. The broker took the credit. That's the point. My job is to make you look brilliant — not to be seen myself.

Read Steve's full story →

Ready to write commercial deals like you've done a hundred of them?

Book a free 30-minute call. Bring a deal you're looking at — we'll work through it together and you'll see exactly what working with me looks like.