Independently Reported
Equipment Finance Commentary
Equipment finance turns on mechanics that rarely get explained: how structure absorbs risk that pricing cannot, why a thin resale market shortens a term, how a fraudulent application gets caught before funding rather than after. Crest Capital President Mark French discusses those mechanics with the trade press. What follows is his position on each, with a link to the independent reporting where it was published.
Positions
How Crest Capital Reads Credit Risk
Four subjects account for most of what reporters ask about. Each answer reflects how a working lender actually decides, rather than a forecast about where the market is heading.
Structure Carries the Risk That Pricing Cannot
Market conditions reach a lender less through demand and more through how a transaction is structured, verified, and monitored. When collateral markets soften, the response is to lean harder on structure rather than to reprice: advance rates anchored to liquidation value, shorter terms where residual risk is higher, tighter documentation when secondary markets are moving.
For cyclical or newer operators the published position is blunt: tighter structure, more equity, shorter terms, tighter covenants, not stretching on credit.
Fraud Is Caught by Layers, Decided by People
Fraudulent applications have grown more convincing because technology and large-scale data breaches let bad actors impersonate real businesses cheaply. The countermeasures are layered rather than singular: device and location signals, document verification, biometric checks.
None of it removes the last step. The consistent position across several years of reporting is that these tools narrow the field and experienced human review still decides the hardest files.
AI Belongs on the Repeatable Work
Crest Capital’s published position is that artificial intelligence earns its place on high-volume, repeatable tasks: extracting data from financial statements, verifying vendor and insurance documents, drafting credit summaries, flagging exceptions for review. On fraud it can surface synthetic-identity signals and document tampering, then route suspicious files to tighter human review.
Accountability for the credit decision itself stays with people. The phrase used in print is that these tools cut cycle time without changing core credit standards.
Residual Risk Is Priced Through Terms, Not Optimism
As equipment grows more software-dependent, resale history thins and residual values get harder to price. The hedges are practical: shorter terms, lower advance rates, and utilization or condition triggers, particularly where software and support drive the value.
Better data helps. Telematics and maintenance records make utilization and condition measurable, which supports smarter structure and real collateral monitoring after closing rather than a guess at origination.
Who Is Quoted
About Mark French
Mark French is President of Crest Capital, the equipment financing company he founded in 1989 and still runs today. Crest Capital finances equipment, vehicles, and software for small and mid-sized businesses across the United States, in amounts from $10,000 to $500,000.
Crest Capital has underwritten equipment credit through every cycle since 1989: the early-1990s recession, the dot-com collapse, the 2008 credit crisis, the pandemic, and the rate swings that followed. The positions above were earned one credit decision at a time.
Read the longer conversation about how Crest Capital was built, or see the equipment finance process those decisions run through.
Sourcing
Where These Positions Were Published
Equipment Finance News is the trade publication covering lender operations across the heavy-equipment industry. Its reporting is written and edited independently, and none of the coverage below is sponsored or paid placement. Headlines link to the original articles.
| Article | Date | Subject | As Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solifi launches AI tool to cut document review times by 70% for lenders (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Mar 2026 | Agentic AI | Cited on agentic AI’s ability to streamline document review and data extraction, cutting cycle time and reducing rework “without changing core credit standards.” |
| AI improves front-office speed, sales prowess in equipment finance (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Feb 2026 | AI in Underwriting | “High-volume and repeatable” front-end tasks are where AI belongs, while humans remain accountable for credit decisions. On fraud, AI “can spot synthetic identity signals, document tampering and pattern anomalies, then route suspicious files to tighter human review.” |
| Equipment lender sentiment reaches 13-month high (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Feb 2026 | Demand Drivers | Tax changes, reshoring and infrastructure work are “supporting real equipment orders, especially in production, automation and materials handling.” |
| Deal structure crucial to equipment finance success in 2026 (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Feb 2026 | Deal Structure | “For cyclical or newer operators, the response is tighter structure, more equity, shorter terms, tighter covenants, not stretching on credit.” |
| OEM aftermarket investments spark financing opportunities (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Feb 2026 | Residual Value | Residual prediction for tech-driven equipment is improving through “more risk-sharing with OEMs and dealers, where lenders align with manufacturers and resellers for after-sale support remarketing.” |
| Labor challenges weigh on equipment industries (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Nov 2025 | Technology Risk | Cited on limited performance data and residual value uncertainty as the core lender challenges with tech-driven machines. |
| Equipment lender confidence dips ahead of potential demand surge (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Sep 2025 | Depreciation Planning | Cited on helping borrowers capitalize on bonus depreciation by mapping every funded asset that could qualify as production property, used equipment included. |
| Risk management crucial for equipment lenders as flexible financing gains steam (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Aug 2025 | Flexible Structures | Detailed Crest Capital’s use of hybrid floating rates with inflation caps, revolving lines embedded in equipment loans so upgrades “never trigger a re-underwrite,” and dynamic cash-trap covenants that “catch trouble sooner than fixed [debt-service-coverage-ratio] tests.” |
| Compliance, AI to drive tech investment in equipment finance (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Dec 2024 | Regulatory Burden | On small-business lending rules that create “significant paperwork and data management burdens that slow down credit access for those small businesses,” answered by “investing in automation to maintain compliance while keeping customer friction as low as possible.” |
| Equipment lenders to balance growth, risk in 2025 (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Dec 2024 | Underwriting Discipline | “Growth matters, but never at the expense of the asset quality we’ve worked hard to build.” |
| Lending fraud jumps in the equipment industry (opens in a new tab)Equipment Finance News | Oct 2024 | Lending Fraud | Technology and large-scale data breaches let fraudsters “more convincingly impersonate legitimate entities and craft more complex multi-layered attempts at fake transactions.” |
Members of the press are welcome to quote any position on this page with attribution to Mark French, President, Crest Capital.
Looking for editorial rankings instead? Investopedia, Forbes Advisor, CNBC Select, and NerdWallet have all placed Crest Capital on their best-of lists. See Awards and Recognition
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