Reliant Funding Review: Alternative Lending For Businesses

Pros

• No credit score requirements
• Multiple types of financing available
• High borrowing amounts

Cons

• Repayments are required frequently
• Not available to businesses in some industries
• Website advertising is not informative
• Customer service is inconsistent

What Is Reliant Funding?

Reliant Funding is an alternative business funder that provides short-term loans and merchant cash advances (MCAs) rather than traditional lending products such as bank loans. While MCAs superficially resemble loans, they differ in some important ways, which we’ll discuss below.

Reliant Funding isn’t the most forthcoming company. Be prepared to have to do some additional due diligence if you decide to do business with this company.

Services Offered

Reliant Funding is an alternative business funder that offers the following types of business funding:

• Merchant Cash Advances: Merchant cash advances purchase a percentage of your daily credit card sales for a lump sum. The provider will then collect those sales until it has recouped the amount agreed upon, typically the amount it advanced you plus a flat fee.
• Short-Term Loans: Short-term loans extend borrowers a lump sum. It, along with a flat fee, is paid back over the length of the term with weekly or daily payments. Term lengths are typically less than a year, although some may go a little longer.

Reliant’s limited short-term lending options are reflected in our rating of 3.5/5 for services.

It’s worth noting that while Reliant Funding does have a landing page for equipment financing, the company states, “We offer funding solutions that can help your business get flexible, rapid funding.” Reliant does not specifically mention details of an equipment leasing or financing program, so it’s unclear if a true equipment financing solution is available or if Reliant’s short-term loans and MCAs are simply flexible enough to use for the purchase of equipment.

Borrower Qualifications

Reliant estimates that it approves over 70% of its applicants. In addition to the qualifications below, your business cannot be in an open bankruptcy, have a negative landlord reference, or any other significant judgments:

To qualify for a short-term loan or MCA from Reliant, you must have been in business for at least one year. However, some exceptions may be made for businesses that have been in operation for at least seven months.

While the company notes that your credit history will be evaluated, no minimum requirements are disclosed. This lack of transparency negatively impacted our eligibility requirements rating, which stands at an above-average 4.4/5.

Rates & Fees

Here’s what you can expect from Reliant Funding in terms of rates and fees.

Reliant offers short-term funding products that make the company a bit more flexible than the average alternative lender. In practice, these products are fairly similar from the customer’s point of view.

While many lenders give a general idea of rates and fees, Reliant prefers not to disclose its rates in advance, which means you’ll have to submit your information before you receive an initial quote.  This complete lack of transparency is reflected in our rating of 2.3/5.

Like most short-term funders, Reliant doesn’t use traditional interest rates. Instead, it charges a fixed fee based on the amount of money you receive. This fee is typically calculated using a multiplier (for example, 1.12), but it might be calculated using a percentage of the borrowing amount (for example, 12% of the borrowing amount). In either case, you’ll have to pay back the amount you borrowed plus the fixed fee. So, if you borrow $10,000 at 12% of the borrowing amount, you’ll owe $11,200.

That doesn’t include additional fees charged. If you want to compare the offer you get to traditional loans, you’ll need to calculate the APR.

There are some differences between the products. A short-term loan (STL) is technically a loan in the traditional sense but is paid back daily through automated withdrawals from your business bank account. A merchant cash advance (MCA) resembles a loan but is an exchange of future sales. Reliant will either claim a percentage of your daily credit card sales or withdraw a set amount from your business account.

Application Process

Reliant has an easy application process, which contributed to our score of 4.3/5. Reliant’s application process begins by requesting a quote on its site. This involves submitting your name, phone number, email address, business name, years in business, and gross annual sales.

Once you’ve received your quote, you can follow up with the representative who gave it to you. If you decide to accept Reliant’s initial offer, expect to have to provide corroborating information about your business and income in the form of bank statements. You should also expect to have your credit checked.

Time to funding varies, but short-term loans and MCAs can be approved within hours, with funds disbursed as soon as the next business day. Depending on your situation, the processing time may be longer — a factor that contributed to our rating in this area.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Reliant has a basic FAQ section that provides a  few details surrounding its products. You will need to speak to a representative to get all the info you need to make a decision.

More confusing for customers, however, is the company’s mail strategy, which involves sending an unsolicited credit card-like item to prospective clients. It’s meant to advertise Reliant’s line of credit products.

While the company does have social media profiles, these profiles aren’t updated frequently.

Another concern worth noting is that at first glance on the Reliant website, it appears that the company offers additional funding products such as SBA loans and startup funding. However, when you dig into these sections, some general information about these funding types is provided, but Reliant does not offer these loans. For all of these concerns noted above, we gave Reliant a 2.4/5.

Customer Service & Technical Support

Reliant can be reached by phone, email, or contact form. The company also has a presence on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It lacks many of the resources available on other lenders’ websites, such as a knowledgebase, live chat, or extended support hours, which brought Reliant’s rating in this area to 2.7/5.

Customers have mixed opinions about their interactions with Reliant. Most of the negative comments seem to revolve around soliciting tactics.

User Reviews

Reliant Funding has generally positive reviews with a few complaints mixed in. Due to the mostly positive feedback from users, we’ve rated Reliant 3.6/5 in this area.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

Reliant is not accredited by the BBB but holds an A+ rating.

Four customer complaints on Reliant Funding’s BBB profile have been logged over the last three years, as well as a handful of negative reviews. Customers took issue with:

• Advertising Tactics: Numerous complaints cited misleading offers received in the mail. These often took the form of a card meant to represent Reliant’s line of credit. Others said they received large amounts of junk mail from Reliant.
• High Cost: As is the case with most alternative lenders, the rates cause a fair amount of sticker shock.
• Lack Of Transparency: Between the limited information on the site and the company’s confusing mailing strategy, Reliant doesn’t come across as especially open.

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

As many companies do, Reliant fares better on Trustpilot, where it has a TrustScore of 4.6/5 based on 1,400+ reviews. Here’s some of what customers liked about the company:

• Fast: If there’s one area in which online funders such as Reliant live up to their advertising, it’s speed.
• Easy: Many reviewers note that Reliant’s application process is very easy.
• Customer Service: Customers generally seemed satisfied with the care they received from Reliant staff.

Final Verdict

Reliant has taken some steps to resolve some of its complaints — specifically, in terms of its advertising. However, Reliant does seem to have stopped offering its Premier Line line of credit, which was the source of some of its advertising issues.

Still, Reliant Funding’s lack of transparency is an issue. Your time is precious, and you’ll be spending more of it trying to extract the information you need to make an informed decision than you should have to. If you don’t mind submitting your data without knowing exactly what you’re applying for, Reliant’s products are attractive. Nevertheless, there are probably better options.

If you’re not sure where else to look, our other merchant cash advance reviews might help point you in the right direction.

Business Loan & Funding Products Review Methodology

Merchant Maverick has been researching and reviewing business lenders since 2015. Our writers have tested over a hundred different funding products, including traditional term loans, online loans, lines of credit, start-up loans, merchant cash advances, and equipment financing. In each review, we evaluate rates and fees, services, eligibility requirements, application process, sales and advertising transparency, customer service, and user reviews.

Read more about how we rate business loans and funding products.

When comparing different lenders and loan products, we consider many data points, including the ease and transparency of the application process, interest rates, repayment structure, sales ethics, time to funding, revenue and time in business qualifications, and credit score requirements. Our lists of the best funding products include only those we’ve deemed worthwhile from multiple vantage points, and often share qualities such as widespread accessibility across fifty states, low rates, flexible requirements, and competitive borrowing amounts.

We spend an average of 10-15 hours researching and updating each one of our lists, making sure the loans and funding products included meet our internal standards for quality and reputation.

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