Complaint Review: First National Capital Foothill Ranch CA - Foothill Ranch California

First of all let me state Im not a disgruntle x-employee.  I have years of experience in finance lending in the capital markets and worked for fortune 10 companies over the years.  To my knowledge there was nobody terminated during 2012 so the excuse regarding employee misconduct or not following appropriate guidelines is questionable.  In my opinion the goal is to get on a deal and get it off the street regardless if the transaction is fundable or not.  I do believe the intent is to fund
every deal, but it sure seemed like a lot of deals were coming in with very few getting approved.  This is a nonprofessional telemarketing company that strictly cold calls potential clients.  They get on a deal and then the closers come in. The relationships are developed via phone conversations with no face to face visits or very little interaction in the field or customer
visits.  However, there is periodic traveling done by key employees to a handful of large accounts.  I frustrated more potential clients than I made happy based on the model and my directive. 
I was told sometimes the customer needs to hear what they want to hear and that came directly from a leader/manager in the organization.  I had a very difficult time dealing with that and it got to the point I didnt want to call on any of my existing customers I dealt with in the past.  I didnt want to bring them into this organization and ruin my reputation in the industry.  I didnt work hard after being there for only 2 months and I did get fired based on my lack of performance, however, my team
brought in $82MM in signed LOIs in less than a year with less than .5% getting funded.  I didnt make the decision to
bring these deals in, it was managements. 

There was a lot of mickey mouse games being played with potential clients and yes we absolutely kept deposits in cases where very little work was done, that wasnt the case always, but it sure seemed like it.  I was compensated on those held
deposits.  If a company has a very strong credit rating and very good collateral the deal could get approved, but this
was rare.  In constructing an LOI I would hear this deal will never get done structured like this, but we would send
the LOI and opt for the bait and switch to something that might get done.  I actually got very stressed and sick due to
this type of model and it was very difficult to come to work.  I was actually warned by a previous employee
on how things operated, but didnt get it until I was in the trenches.  I would also hear this deal is never going
to get done.  In returning deposits that took a long time as it would sit on the leaders desk and question every little
thing to see what we could retain.  There is a cost of doing business, but we didnt see it that way.  I saw very little transactions being retained in house.

In summary the company tries and works very hard at getting deals in.  They do work very hard at trying to get them funded.  They simply waste too many peoples time on deals they cant get funded or even good knowledge of
the transaction to appropriately go to syndications to see if they can sell it.  I would stick with local banking
relationships where you would actually see someone and not a company you only deal with on the phone when you are talking millions of dollars.  A good banking relationship manager should be able to guide you through the process and give you good direction on how to proceed with any capital expenditures. 
Why deal with a company when you know they are going to have to broker the deal?  Yes most of the big boys do
the same thing, but they are in the drivers seat and in control of the transaction.  They have your best interest in mind and they are professionally trained to take care of the customer.  They will tell you upfront the probability of a transaction getting funded. 
Todays market is tough so approvals dont happen overnight.  Simply know who you are doing business with.  The person who made the original complaint most likely has a lot of validity based on my exposure with the company.

As the President of First National Capital I am solidly convinced that this report is false in it's entirety and was possibly filed by a disgruntled ex-employee. As evidence to support that position, in early May we were unfortunately forced to terminate several employees for lack of business performance and or other violations of company policy. It's not a coicidence in our opinion that this report popped up a couple of weeks later.







As further support of that position, in reading the report closely a few things "jump out" as "likely not written by a client". First, under no circumstances would a client that had not received a credit approval been involved with many of the names listed in this posting, these employees all work in different departments, some of them in the documentation group which doesn't get involved in a lease/loan prior to Credit Approval. So since apparently the transaction wasn't approved and funded, why would someone be working with the documentation group? Other than an employee, there would be no reason a client would know or be in contact with all of these individuals.







Secondly, the only time that First National would "retain" a deposit in it's entirety would be where we had done the substantial work to gain an approval and incurred all the expenses associated with that effort and then a client "walked or reneged in allowing us to fund the transaction. In all other cases (where we failed to approve the transaction, or failed to meet the terms agreed to between the parties) deposits are returned in the normal course of business every single week. We are NOT in the business of retaining unearned deposits. We are a thriving company as a result of providing credit to credit worthy clients and successfully funding those opportunities.







Additionally, the report is false in saying "this company is a broker and not a direct lender". We are a direct lender/lessor for certain transactions, and for others we gain "participation" in the contract for various reasons, cost of capital, internal portfolio risk management, transaction structure, transaction size, and equipment liability. (this method is standard practice amongst virtually every company in our industry, including G.E Capital, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and dozens of others.) I know because they ask us on a regular basis to participate in their transactions.







We have funded more than $200 million of transactions for our own account over the last several years and either hold those transactions to maturity, or gain participation at various stages of the agreement. So clearly we are not solely a "broker". 







Furthermore our ""claim" of being the 4th Largest Independent Leasing Company in the U.S. is in fact true and can be verified by contacting the Monitor at www.monitor.com. The Monitor is the most widely publicized and recognized Industry Source in equipment finance. That ranking was based upon  Business Volume for the year 2010, and our ranking actually fell to 6th in 2011. 







I am further offended by these accusations since we have been in business for over 7.5 years without any type of similar complaint. We have never been involved in litigation despite funding almost $1.0 billion of leases and loans, and although we aren't perfect in our execution of every transaction, we pride ourselves on treating customers in the manner in which we would like to be treated if we were applying for a lease or a loan.







We have not only hundreds of satisfied clients, but hundreds of letters from those satisfied clients telling us exactly why they liked our services. Any client that is considering doing business with our company will be provided any number of references to call should they so desire and will be provided these reference letters authored by clients.







Lastly, if this is a "real client" then why post this anonymously? If you have been so "wronged" during the process I would think you would add some legitimacy to this complaint by identifying yourself,  and if in fact things transpired the way you described, you would be entitled to a refund of your deposit, so identify yourself and ask for your deposit so we can deal with the issue as business professionals.







For any other clients that are considering using our services and have a concern about this posting, please feel free to call me directly at 866-750-3622, X221 and I will be happy to describe exactly how our business operates and answer any questions you might have.



Sincerely,







Keith Duggan







President







First National Capital Corp.