At every industry conference, in every strategic planning session, someone describes pricing pressure the way farmers describe rain — an external condition, something the market does to providers, an act of God to be endured until conditions improve.

The data supports a less comfortable interpretation. Spread compression is not weather. It is a verdict — the market’s precise, unsentimental assessment of how replaceable a finance provider actually is. And in the vendor channel, where the majority of equipment finance volume originates, the verdict has been getting harsher for reasons that have little to do with the number of competitors bidding on programs.