At a Glance
- 49% of vendor finance programs added at least one documentation requirement in the prior 18 months without removing a single existing requirement (Secured Research)
- The median vendor finance submission package grew from 9 to 14 required documents over five years, even as average ticket sizes held roughly flat (Secured Research)
- 28% of approved-but-unfunded vendor deals die during stipulation-clearing rather than for any credit-related reason (Secured Research)
- In a trailing 24-month review, 35% of required stipulations had not changed a single credit decision (Secured Research)
The Stip That Never Caught Anything
Every vendor finance documentation list contains requirements that have never once changed an outcome. They were added after a single bad deal, by someone reasoning backward from a loss, and they have stayed on the list because no one is responsible for removing them. The list grows by accretion — which is why the median submission package has grown from nine required documents to fourteen over five years, even as average ticket sizes held roughly flat. Each addition felt prudent in isolation.
The cumulative effect is a submission package that a dealer principal looks at and decides not to start. No individual requirement is unreasonable. The aggregate is what costs you the deal — and because the cost is spread across every requirement, it is invisible to anyone defending any single one of them. Ask the person who built the list to justify a specific document and the answer is almost never evidence. It is a story: the deal that went bad in 2019, the audit finding from a prior employer, the requirement a former credit chief insisted on that no one has dared touch since.
