The machine behind the financial model

The first piece of equipment I helped recover was a packaging machine whose advertised resale value assumed that it could leave the building in working order. It could not. A loading opening had been altered after installation, the original controls documentation was missing and the prospective buyer wanted a different electrical configuration. I was responsible for assembling the facts, not negotiating the recovery. Watching three specialists explain three different costs taught me that a valuation is an argument about a possible transaction, with conditions attached.

I had joined Talverwick Credit Company in June 1998 after completing an accounting-focused business degree at Nerivale Institute of Commerce. My early files involved workshop and production equipment across Ohio. I reconciled inspection reports, customer balances and removal estimates for more experienced colleagues. I sometimes trusted the neatest report too readily. A supervisor made me accompany an inspector and explain which facts in my worksheet I had actually seen. That distinction between reported evidence and observed evidence has stayed with me through every promotion.

In January 2004 I moved into portfolio management at the same company. Recoveries had shown me the end of a difficult relationship; this role let me study the decisions that preceded it. I supervised nine analysts and account specialists handling a US$185 million book. We found that customers asking for temporary payment adjustments were being grouped together despite very different causes. Some had lost an order, some were waiting for installation and some owned equipment that could not perform the agreed task. I separated those paths so that collection activity did not become a substitute for investigating the problem.

That work brought me into regular discussion with regional lenders. I initially resisted their argument that a useful credit process must fit the pace of a customer investment decision. I thought they were asking for less investigation. They were often asking for the right investigation sooner. By the time I accepted the regional lending director role at Orvenstead Equipment Finance in February 2010, I had learnt to ask which uncertainty could change our answer and which detail merely made a file look more complete. The move took me from managing an existing portfolio to being accountable for new business.

My regional remit covered Ohio and western Pennsylvania, with 42 colleagues and a US$420 million receivables book by the end of 2015. I did not approve every transaction personally. I set the escalation boundaries, challenged exceptions and worked with credit colleagues on proposals whose commercial appeal concealed a weak service arrangement. One early mistake was to assume that customers buying the same type of machine faced similar risks. A workshop with a trained maintenance team and a single-machine operator buying remote support were making substantially different commitments.

I became chief operating officer in January 2016. The company was expanding its reach into Indiana, and the operational burden was arriving before some of the supporting processes. My remit included customer administration, equipment inspections, collections support and technology delivery. I chose to stabilise the return-condition process before introducing a new customer portal. That disappointed colleagues who wanted a visible digital improvement, but a clearer screen would not have resolved arguments about photographs taken after an asset had moved. The eventual portal captured the evidence needed by the revised process.

The board appointed me chief executive in January 2021. I inherited an experienced credit team and a business that had retained customers through a difficult period. I also inherited a habit of treating supplier relationships as a reliable substitute for independent equipment knowledge. I challenged that habit without dismissing the expertise of our partners. Suppliers understand their machines; their incentives do not always match the residual exposure that remains with a finance company. Our revised approach asks for evidence appropriate to the proposed structure and makes the cost of uncertainty visible in the offer.

I have become more explicit about the limits of my own experience. Asset recovery and operations give me a useful perspective on the consequences of a lending decision, but they do not make me the best judge of every new equipment category. I ask specialists to explain unfamiliar maintenance dependencies before I form a commercial view. I also want colleagues to bring an awkward file before it becomes an incident. A team that hides exceptions to preserve a tidy report deprives its chief executive of facts needed to act responsibly.

Outside my executive remit, I am considering one non-executive appointment where knowledge of financed assets, small-business customers and operational disputes would be useful. I would bring practical questions rather than claim expertise in every part of a board agenda. I am not seeking a title that confirms my current role. I am looking for a setting in which my experience can improve the discussion while other directors expose the assumptions I have stopped noticing.

Open to Board appointments

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