AMAZON LENDING – the untold facts
Today I had a conversation with one of the top executives at Amazon Lending.
I wanted to share what I learned. She apologized that a lot of this information is not out there and is not clear to sellers.
1) You have to have a professional account for at least 1 year before the system will make an offer
2) The offers are automated. Larger amounts are checked and approved by humans
3) The maximum loan amount is currently $750,000 in the US market
4) Right now they are 4-6 month terms, but they are testing up to 12 month terms
5) Sales in other markets (UK, DE, etc.) are not factored into your US offers. Each market has separate criteria. However, you can use US loans to fund inventory in other markets.
6) Your credit is not checked and loans are not reported to credit agencies
7) They don’t care if you have other loans (Kabbage, OnDeck, etc.). So stacking is fine.
8) The loan offer is based on your trailing 12 month lowest monthly sales. So if you are doing $100K right now, but 10 months ago you only did $5K, your loan amount will be based on the $5K figure. The amount will generally be as high as 2X your lowest monthly sales over the past 12 months, but a few other factors are considered too which could raise the multiplier (rate of growth for example).
9) They do look at your metrics (how fast you answer customer emails, return rates, sales volume curves, etc.)
10) They do look at your inventory levels in FBA. Any recent big withdrawals of inventory can hurt your offer
11) You can take multiple offers, but there is a 45 day waiting period if a loan is still open. So if you take a $10K offer this month, and a few months later are offered $30K, they will pay off the balance of the $10K with funds from the $30K and then everything is at new $30K interest rate offered.
12) There are 3 interest rate levels. Sellers doing over $1 million per year get the lowest rates
13) You cannot request a loan. It has to be offered by Amazon.