Gateway Commercial Finance announced the formation of a new division, Sentinel Portfolio Solutions, to provide its platform for invoice and collateral management to asset-based lenders, community banks and specially finance companies.

“We developed a proprietary system that has been very successful for Gateway Commercial Finance in building our business and we would now like to share this system and our expertise with others involved in invoice and collateral management,” said Marc J. Marin, managing director.

Marin explained that over the years, invoice management has become more complicated and resource-intensive. To monitor account receivables correctly, it takes an entire team of professionals with in-depth knowledge, the latest technology and use of best practices to effectively evaluate accounts receivables, inventory, credit procedures, monitoring etc.

“We know from our own experience as a national factoring company these past several years, that to perform these tasks correctly, you need to employ quite a few assets. We also know for smaller lenders and community banks, developing this infrastructure can be time-consuming, labor intensive and costly,” he said.

These savings can be significant when a business considers the commitment required in human resources, portfolio software, allocation of space, overhead, written policies and procedures, untested personnel and a lengthy ramp-up period.

“We have all of those assets ready to go now,” Marin said.

Included in Sentinel’s services is a proprietary system developed by Gateway that integrates the invoice management with a borrower’s existing accounting department. With this service, Marin noted, many times a client’s customers do not realize there is even a third-party involved with accounts receivable.

Some of the services offered by Sentinel include: portfolio management software, credit and underwriting services, legal documents, daily client servicing, cash posting, daily GL interface, borrowing base generation, month end close and budgeting.

In addition, other special services include debtor credit investigation, noticing account debtors, boarding verifications and collateral testing, debtor contact verification, testing a and confirmation, remittance review and third party verification and monitoring. Currently Gateway outsources its services to several community banks and lenders.

“We went through a ramp-up period with our current clients and from the results we’ve seen we now know we can offer our successful collateral management services to others,” Marin said.

Gateway Commercial Finance provides a variety of financing options to small to medium-sized businesses in need of capital.