Mastering speed and accuracy in equipment finance with Thomson Reuters® CLEAR
The challenge keeping equipment finance executives up at night isn’t just about moving faster—it’s about moving faster without cutting corners.
In an industry where funding timelines can make or break a deal, C-suite leaders face a persistent tension: comprehensive due diligence protects the portfolio, but slow processes cost revenue. For years, this felt like an unavoidable trade-off. Choose speed, and then risk approving bad actors. Choose thoroughness, and then lose deals to faster competitors.
But what if that trade-off is a false choice?
Thomson Reuters recognized that many organizations feel they lack the necessary expertise or tools in-house to tackle complex problems like large-scale due diligence without sacrificing speed. The solution isn’t choosing between thoroughness and velocity—it’s leveraging automated, integrated due diligence platforms that deliver both.
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The transformation of due diligence
The post-approval trap
Dan Burris, Head of Portfolio, Risk Management, and Fraud at Avtech Capital, an independent equipment finance firm, experienced this dilemma firsthand. Before transforming their approach, Avtech’s process “was cumbersome and it took a lot of time,” making it impractical to screen every deal. Post-approval discoveries created awkward conversations with customers—having to circle back with “this condition for this judgment you got to resolve”—undermining trust at a critical moment.
The real cost wasn’t just operational inefficiency. It was deal mortality. Approved transactions died in the funding gap, eroded by back-and-forth that competitors could exploit.
Even when firms commit to due diligence, incomplete data creates a dangerous illusion of protection. Burris noted his previous provider “wasn’t as comprehensive,” occasionally missing judgments and lawsuits. Business affiliations remained difficult to map. Negative news required manual Google searches. Critical identity verification lacked depth across authoritative sources.
For C-level executives responsible for portfolio performance, these gaps represent more than inefficiencies—they’re governance failures waiting to happen.
The transformation of due diligence
Avtech implemented Thomson Reuters® CLEAR to access comprehensive data including judgments, lawsuits, robust business affiliations, and automated negative news monitoring. CLEAR ID Confirm validates identity across multiple authoritative bureaus, while CLEAR Risk Inform surfaces hidden risk indicators.
It’s more comprehensive, more streamlined… [CLEAR] gave us more information faster so we could do it on the other half of deals and address due diligence items prior to an approval.
Head of Risk Management & Fraud, Avtech Capital
The team configured risk-tiering that allows them to scale due diligence to 100% of deals without proportional headcount increases: “we could set up our own scoring… and if there’s nothing material there, then boom, we can sign off on it without having to review every individual report.”
The results
The transformation was definitive:
- 75% reduction in due diligence time per deal
- Doubled coverage to 100% of transactions
- 50% net time savings even after expanding scope
- Significant reduction in deal mortality
As Burris quantifies: “to utilize CLEAR compared to our other due diligence process… it took us 25% of the time,” cutting effort “down to 1/4.”
But the most compelling outcome was risk mitigation. Burris shared: “We were good with the deal… but the due diligence on the guy is that he was just a bad actor. We have a policy here. We don’t do business with bad actors… If it wasn’t for the comprehensive amount of data that we initially got from CLEAR… we would have done the deal.”
The biggest success is that we’ve been able to eliminate the amount of deals that die before funding because we’re not coming back to them with additional things and we’ve been able to shorten that timeline.
Head of Risk Management & Fraud, Avtech Capital
What this means for your firm
The equipment finance firms that will lead in the next decade won’t be those with the fastest approval times or the most conservative underwriting. They’ll be organizations that achieve both: rapid decisioning built on comprehensive risk intelligence.
Read the full Avtech Capital case study to see exactly how they doubled due diligence coverage while cutting commercial underwriting time—and how your firm can achieve similar results.
Case Study
Avtech Capital doubles due diligence coverage, cuts underwriting time with CLEAR
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