Gateway Commercial Finance, a south Florida based factoring company, has launched Sentinel Portfolio Solutions to support community banks who desire to lend to small businesses but lack experienced personnel or the requisite highly specialized infrastructure. “For nearly four years now, we’ve been providing back office/portfolio management services for several local banks that provide receivables based products to their customers” said Marc J. Marin, managing director of Gateway Commercial Finance.

As the demand for small business loans increase, community banks looking for a way to safely support small businesses are quickly turning to C&I loans and receivables based products. “The dilemma many of the community bankers have is the lack of specialized staff and necessary infrastructure to transition timely and economically into C&I lending which focus on receivables and inventory as the primary sources of collateral” said Marin.

Given the challenges of growing a bank’s portfolio (diversifying from real estate) while not significantly adding to overhead has been a daunting challenge. Sentinel Portfolio Solutions offers an ideal solution to community banks looking to accomplish both.

Sentinel has the resources to support clients in the areas of underwriting, specialized collateral evaluation, credit, due diligence, monitoring, portfolio operations, compliance and collections. “We’re able to bring a full suite of highly specialized experience and resources to our banking partners on an interim or permanent basis at a fraction of the cost they can do it for themselves.”

Sentinel delivers a truly turn-key service for community banks. “We’re the first service provider to offer a para-passu platform giving our partners the confidence knowing that we’re fully vested in our mutual success. In the past, other providers were only interested in providing back office…with no downside risk. We’re confident in our proven policies, effective procedures and experienced people that we’re willing to match dollar for dollar with our partners.”

Marc J. Marin has more than 17 years of factoring and receivables funding experience. He’s a frequent author on factoring & portfolio management to various publications; is an active participant in the Risk Management Association and currently is a 2013 board member of the International Factoring Association.