Flexible Business Loans, No Serviceability: Why Private Mortgages Australia Has Led the Way Since 2014
Every business owner's situation looks a little different on paper. A tradie with strong cash flow but a couple of years of transitional financials. A developer who needs to move in days, not months, to secure a site. An SME owner who's genuinely profitable but carries an ATO debt from a rough trading patch. None of these scenarios are unusual. They're simply what running a real business looks like.
For more than a decade, Private Mortgages Australia has built its entire lending model around that reality as the founding premise of the business.
Peter Cuskelly, PMA's Managing Director, has spent over 35 years in banking, finance and credit, including years working inside major bank lending and, later, as a mortgage broker before joining PMA. That vantage point, on both sides of the lending desk, has shaped the philosophy PMA still runs on today.
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Commercial Judgment vs. Checklists: How Private Lenders Assess Merit
Before joining PMA, Cuskelly worked as a broker, submitting deals into the traditional bank system. It's where his frustration with policy-first lending took root: watching viable borrowers get delayed or declined not because the deal didn't make sense, but because it didn't fit a standard credit policy.
When the chance came to join a lender built around commercial judgement rather than rigid policy, he took it. It's a philosophy that still defines every deal PMA assesses today: every application is judged on its own merits, not against a generic checklist.
Instead of serviceability, PMA has always centered its lending decisions on a clear, well-considered exit strategy years before "alternative assessment" became a common industry phrase.
- No serviceability testing on eligible loans
- Genuine 'no-doc' options for eligible commercial borrowers
- Loan terms shaped around the borrower's actual circumstances, not a fixed product tier
Tailored Funding for Self-Employed Borrowers & SMEs
Business income isn’t like a payslip. It moves with trading cycles, reinvestment decisions and one-off events that a standard servicing model was never built to interpret fairly.
“Many business owners run strong operations with real assets and clear plans, yet still don't fit neatly inside a bank's lending criteria. Having worked on both the bank and broker side of that equation, we have an understanding of where deals typically run into trouble and how funding can be restructured to reach a sensible outcome anyway,” Cuskelly points out.
That's translated into a product range shaped entirely around real SME, property and developer scenarios:
- SME & Working Capital Loans: Quick access to capital to manage cash flow and operational transitions.
- ATO Tax Debt Finance: Dedicated solutions to clear tax debts and restore traditional bank eligibility.
- Construction & Development Finance: Funding for land acquisition, construction, completion, and residual stock.
- Flexible Equity Release: Unlocking capital via first and second mortgages on Australian real estate.
Fast Settlement & Funding Certainty When Traditional Banks Stall
Flexibility means little if it doesn't move at the pace business actually happens.
One recent example: a broker PMA had worked with before came to them personally, after a major bank told him just before Christmas that it wouldn't be able to settle his property purchase in time. Because he already understood exactly what PMA needed, the loan was assessed and settled on schedule.
The bank, by contrast, took a further two months to approve the same deal, by which point he simply refinanced and repaid PMA's facility.
It's a pattern PMA sees often. Brokers and borrowers need a “yes” on time and without last-minute surprises. And PMA’s loan application process has been honed around the importance of that:
- Indicative offer within 4 business hours of a completed Quick App
- Referrer fees paid within 24 hours of settlement, with no clawbacks
- A dedicated, hands-on relationship and credit team from the first conversation
- A decade-plus track record, not a new campaign
Private Mortgages Australia was founded in 2014 on the belief that Australian small businesses deserved a lending model built around their reality, not a rigid set of bank criteria. Over a decade on, that founding idea has been tested through multiple market cycles and proven across hundreds of settled loans.
Cuskelly, who has now spent more years inside PMA than he did at the major bank where his own finance career began, sees this consistency as the real point of difference: “it's not a single policy change or campaign, but a decade-plus of applying the same commercial judgement, deal after deal.”
What business owners should keep in mind
Cuskelly's advice to business owners considering a loan hasn't changed over the years:
“Always read the fine print, understand the full cost of a loan over its entire term rather than fixating on a single number. Lean on a broker, accountant or solicitor if anything is unclear.”
“It's also worth weighing the full picture rather than rate alone. Sometimes the cost of not securing funding in time (a missed settlement, a stalled project, a lost opportunity) outweighs a higher interest rate many times over.”
Looking ahead
As more Australian businesses and brokers look for lenders who can move at the pace of a real opportunity, PMA's focus remains the same as it's always been: understand the deal, understand the exit, and get it done.
That hasn't changed in over a decade, and it's exactly what the PMA team, led by Cuskelly, will keep doing.
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