Glenclair Commercial Debt Pricing Index

Inaugural edition · 1 September 2026

An independent, anonymised read of mid-market commercial credit, built from Glenclair banking tenders, not advertised rate cards. Margins over 90-day BBSY by asset class, LVR band and lender tier. Credit decision timeframes. Covenant drift. How often the incumbent lost.

Why this exists

The market does not publish your price. Residential borrowers can open a comparison site; mid-market commercial borrowers cannot. Commercial debt is priced file by file — security, cash conversion, industry, documentation quality, relationship history and the lender's book at that moment all move the margin. Advertised "from" rates are marketing, and RBA averages mix $200,000 overdrafts with $200 million revolvers.

Glenclair runs full-market tenders. That produces a private dataset most advisers never see: the actual winning margin over 90-day BBSY, the credit-decision clock, the covenants that survived negotiation, and whether the incumbent bank held the relationship or lost it. The Glenclair Pricing Index is that dataset, stripped of names and released quarterly for the owners who actually pay the interest.

What a sophisticated owner should do with it

• Interrogate the incumbent. If your margin sits outside the relevant band for your asset class and LVR, the relationship is costing you. Ask why, in writing.
• Separate price from structure. A 15bp cheaper line with a tighter ICR, a cash sweep and a personal guarantee is not cheaper. The Index reports both.
• Time the refinance. Approval clocks differ by tier. A 30-day major-bank credit process and a 7-day private-credit process are not interchangeable when a settlement date is fixed.
• Read covenants as price. The quiet tightening of 2024–25 has eased at the prime end and held or hardened on development and higher-LVR books. That is a pricing event.
• Use a tender, not a conversation. The incumbent-beat rate is the single most useful number in this document. It measures whether loyalty is being paid for.

The unit of price is the margin, not the headline rate

Most mid-market facilities above a few million dollars reset off 90-day BBSY Bid. The cash rate is the policy rate; BBSY is the funding-market rate your loan actually references. As at 1 September 2026 the RBA cash rate target is 4.35% and three-month BBSW has been printing in the mid-4.50s. Your all-in coupon is that benchmark plus the customer margin, plus line fees, unused-limit fees and any establishment load the term sheet buried. The Index quotes indicative customer margins over 90-day BBSY, in basis points.

Three cuts matter: asset class (owner-occupied CRE, investment CRE, development and construction, acquisition / leveraged, working capital, plant and equipment); LVR / gearing band (≤50%, 51–65%, 66–75%, >75%); and lender tier (major banks, second-tier ADIs, specialist non-banks and private credit).

Sample bands — commercial property

Illustrative mid-points for a going-concern mid-market borrower, full documentation, metro or strong regional security, no material ATO arrears. Figures are customer margins over 90-day BBSY Bid, in basis points. From the first live quarter these become medians (with an interquartile range) of settled or credit-approved Glenclair tenders; cells below the observation floor are left blank.

Owner-occupied CRE · margin over 90-day BBSY (bp)

Investment CRE (leased, acceptable WALE) · margin over 90-day BBSY (bp)

Major bank and second-tier margins are withheld from the public version. Request the full Index for every tier.

The lower end of each range is clean industrial or medical, strong tenant or owner-occupier cash flow, simple security. The upper end is hospitality, short WALE, specialised use, or a credit committee already heavy in the sector. Line fees of 0.40–0.80% p.a. on limits are common at majors and sit outside the margin cell — always convert to an all-in drawn cost. Development and construction, acquisition / leveraged, working capital and asset-finance bands are in the full quarterly document.

If your margin sits outside the relevant public band… it doesn't automatically mean you're overpaying: the file may carry risk the band doesn't, or you may be with a cheaper tier. But it's the signal to get your facility tested. Above the band with clean security and steady cash flow is the classic sign of a facility that hasn't been tendered in years.

Credit-decision clocks, not marketing SLAs

The clock starts when a complete credit pack hits the lender, not when a BDM says "we're keen". Figures are illustrative business days from complete pack to written indicative or credit-approved term sheet. Settlement is a second clock.

Owner takeaway: if the transaction has a hard date — auction, share-sale completion, sunset, expiry of an existing facility — run a dual-track tender: one major or second-tier for price, one specialist for certainty. Paying 40 basis points to hit a date is often cheaper than missing it.

Covenants — the other half of the price

Covenants are how lenders take back the margin they gave you in the term sheet. A 160bp CRE facility with a 2.00× ICR, quarterly testing, a cash sweep above 70% LVR and a negative pledge over the operating company is a different product from a 190bp facility with a 1.50× ICR tested annually. Price competition has not produced a general collapse in standards.

Owners who last refinanced in 2021–22 on "relationship terms" should assume the covenant schedule will be rewritten, not rolled. From the live edition the Index scores three covenant dimensions per cell (0–5): earnings cover, leverage / LVR discipline, and structural tightness.

The incumbent test — how often the sitting bank was beaten

This is the number most owners never see. "Beaten" means the winning term sheet produced a lower all-in drawn cost, or a material structural improvement at the same cost, versus the incumbent's best defendable offer after they were shown they were in a contest.

Banks price inertia.

A mid-market facility that has not been tendered in three years is, in our experience, almost never on the current clearing margin for that risk. The incumbent will often meet the market once they see a competing term sheet — that is an admission, not a favour. Owners who "don't want to upset the relationship" are funding the relationship with their own EBITDA.

A practical checklist before the next facility event

• Map every facility. Limit, drawn, benchmark, margin, line fee, maturity, security, guarantees, covenants, next review date — on one page.
• Place yourself in a cell. Asset class, LVR band, documentation quality, lender tier you are in today. If you cannot place the file, you cannot judge the price.
• Convert everything to all-in. Drawn margin + line fee + unused fee + planned amortisation. A cheap revolver you never draw is an expensive insurance policy.
• Decide the constraint. Price, leverage, speed, or covenant-reset? Tenders fail when the owner wants all four from the same lender.
• Run a genuine tender. Three to six well-chosen lenders, the same information memorandum, the same questions, written term sheets. Conversation is not a tender.
• Give the incumbent a right to defend, once — after the field has priced, not before. Defending first is how incumbents set the ceiling.
• Read the CP list before you celebrate. Approval with twelve conditions and a 40-day solicitor process is not approval.
• Revisit annually, tender every 2–3 years — or at any material change: acquisition, capex spike, covenant squeeze, or a 50bp move in your cell.

Methodology and FAQs

What this is not. It is not a comparison rate under the National Credit Code — these are commercial facilities. It is not a forecast of the cash rate. It is not advice to any reader as a class. A printed band is an observation about a private sample of tendered mid-market credit, biased toward businesses that already chose to run a contest. That bias is the point: the Index describes the price available to owners who ask the market.

Editions

• Inaugural edition, 1 September 2026 (this page): methodology and sample architecture.
• Q4 2026: first edition from the live tender book. Due the third week after quarter-end.

Request the quarterly Index

Independent commercial finance · Paid by lenders, aligned to the borrower · Glenclair Financial, Sydney · glenclair.com.au. Indicative, anonymised tender outcomes. Not a quote, not an offer, and not a comparison rate. Figures shown are illustrative sample architecture for the inaugural edition.