Equipment finance leads for Australian brokers
Equipment finance enquiries come from operators with a specific machine in mind and a reason it has to happen now. The asset carries the deal, which changes what you ask on the first call and where it lands on your panel.
Equipment finance is a business borrowing against the thing it is buying: prime movers and trailers, excavators, tractors, CNC machines, forklifts, commercial kitchens, medical fit-outs, IT hardware. The asset is the security, so the credit story runs through the machine as much as through the accounts.
The enquiries cluster around four reasons that look identical on a lead card and behave nothing alike on the phone.
Tax-time planning
The owner has spoken to their accountant and wants the asset in service, not merely ordered, before the books close. The decision is made; the finance is a deadline problem. Leave the tax question with the accountant and treat the date as real.
Ageing equipment
Out of warranty, in the workshop too often, still worth something on trade. Months of thinking sit behind it, so they answer the phone and compare structures rather than panic. The most winnable of the four, and the easiest to lose to a dealer quote.
A breakdown that stopped work
The loader is dead, the crew is standing around, and every day off the job is revenue gone. Settlement certainty beats everything else here, price included. Ask what they are running in the meantime; a hire unit burning cash is the urgency.
Capacity for new work
A contract won, a second site, another crew. The asset is the visible half of a larger funding need, with working capital or a fit-out sitting behind it unmentioned. This is where one equipment enquiry becomes two facilities, if you ask.
The most common opening is a version of “I have found the machine, I just need the money.” A supplier is holding a unit and the quote is already in their inbox, which dates the deal for you. Establish who the supplier is: a dealership sale and a private sale are different files, with different verification and timing.
If their first question is about rate, they are holding a dealer finance quote. “I did the last one through the dealer” means an existing facility with a balloon date attached, a second deal in plain sight. Almost nobody volunteers their existing commitments or where their tax account sits, so ask early.
The enquiry gives you the shape of the deal; these decide which lender takes it.
- Exactly what the asset is. Make, model, year, hours or kilometres. “A truck” is not an asset description, and no lender prices one.
- New, used or demo. It changes who will look at the file, and how the unit’s age at end of term is treated.
- Where it sits in the asset tiers. Mainstream, easily resold units are the comfortable end; specialised plant, fit-outs and IT gear narrow the panel fast.
- Value, deposit and the amount actually financed. A trade-in, a cash contribution or the GST component moves the number off the sticker price.
- The entity, and whether it is asset-backed. ABN-registered, GST-registered, property behind the directors or not, and whether this is their first commercial facility or their fourth.
- Identified, or still browsing. A live invoice is a deal this week; “looking at options” is a nurture, and the supplier’s holding period is usually the real deadline.
Straightforward assets bought from a dealer by an established, GST-registered entity sit at the easy end of your panel. Private sales, older units, specialised plant and short trading histories push the file toward lenders that want full financials: not a worse enquiry, a longer one, and often where the margin is. More on fit in leads for asset finance brokers.
Two things sit behind the current demand. Business credit is growing 10.8% year on year (RBA Financial Aggregates, July 2026) while housing credit is quieter. And the $20,000 instant asset write-off was made permanent for eligible small businesses from 1 July 2026, passed by Parliament in August 2026 and subject to Royal Assent (aph.gov.au, August 2026).
For a broker that changes certainty, not the calendar. A write-off does not pay for the machine, so the facility is still needed, and the deduction still falls in the income year the asset is first used or installed ready for use, so the end-of-June date recurs every year. What permanence removes is the risk of the concession lapsing. The tax position belongs to the borrower’s accountant. More in the instant asset write-off in 2026 and the 2026 asset finance market.
Equipment enquiries arrive inside our asset finance leads flow; they are not a separate product. The enquiry captures asset type, make and model, value, deposit, amount, settlement timeframe and whether the unit is new, used or demo. The mobile is confirmed by SMS code before the lead ships, and every enquiry is sold once, to one broker. Pay per lead, no lock-in contracts, no setup fees, delivered to your inbox or CRM in real time.