White label portfolio management and credit review for private lenders, note investors, and funds

We run the credit side of private loan portfolios, under your brand.

You raised the capital and built the investor relationships. We supply the credit function behind the portfolio, from periodic advisory work to complete portfolio management, and we underwrite the individual loans before you fund them. Your name stays on everything.
35 yearsof formal bank credit experience
Threeof the largest banks in the world
Thousandsof loans underwritten and made
Full cycleorigination through workout and recovery
The Problem

You raised the capital. Who runs the credit?

Raising capital and running a credit operation are two different jobs. Plenty of operators are good at the first and have no one trained for the second. The capital comes in, the loans go out, and the credit function is whoever has time that week. That holds until a loan turns, and then the gaps show.

01

No written credit policy. Every loan is a one-off decision, and the standard drifts with the deal flow.

02

No independent underwriting. Deals get funded on relationship and collateral value, with no trained credit review before the money moves.

03

Servicing on autopilot. Nobody is watching the portfolio for the early signs a loan is going wrong.

04

No plan for default. The first workout gets figured out after the loan is already nonperforming.

05

Investor reporting with nothing credit-grade behind it. The operation cannot show a policy, a process, or a file that survives scrutiny.

What We Do

What does The Mad Lender do?

The Mad Lender supplies the credit function for private lenders, note investors, and funds. We do it two ways, and most clients use both.

First, white label portfolio management. We run the credit side of your portfolio under your brand, scaled to what you need. Some clients want periodic advice. Others want us monitoring the portfolio and managing the loans that turn. Others hand us the whole credit operation, from a written credit policy through underwriting, monitoring, and workout, while they keep their investors and their name.

Second, deal review. We underwrite a specific loan or note before you fund it and deliver a written recommendation: Proceed, Proceed with Conditions, or Do Not Proceed. It is the same review institutional lenders run on every loan. It stands on its own, and it feeds the portfolios we manage.

The Mad Lender · Confidential
Private Loan Recommendation Report
Prepared for the lender · Before funding
VerdictProceed with Conditions
Character · Capacity · Collateral: every finding documented or labeled unverified.
Who We Serve

Who is The Mad Lender for?

Our clients have raised or committed real capital and understand that yield without a credit function is speculation. They want trained credit behind the entire portfolio, deal after deal.

Loan Funds and Portfolio Operators

Capital raised, investors to answer to, and recurring deal flow that needs one consistent credit standard. White label portfolio management, from advisory work to the complete credit function, run under your brand.

Note Investors

Single notes to full pools, performing and nonperforming. Portfolio management, tape review, re-performance analysis, and a workout plan per note.

Direct Private Lenders

Personal capital in first and second position real estate loans. Deal review before the money moves, and portfolio support as the book grows.

Self-Directed IRA Lenders

Retirement capital. Credit and underwriting review that works alongside your custodian, attorney, and CPA.

The Book

The missing credit expertise, between two covers.

The Mad Lender’s Guide to Private Lending and Note Investing walks through underwriting, the Three C’s of credit, loan structure, documentation, servicing, default, workout, and the note market the way a bank credit officer learned them. 273 pages, written to be read the way you would read a credit policy manual.

PAPERBACK ON AMAZON KINDLE EDITION


The Mad Lender's Guide to Private Lending and Note Investing, by Doug Smith

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Doug Smith, principal of The Mad Lender
Leadership

Who runs The Mad Lender?

The practice is led by Doug Smith, a career credit officer with 35 years on the credit side of banking, including time inside three of the largest banks in the world. He has underwritten or made thousands of loans and collected on the ones that went wrong. He wrote The Mad Lender’s Guide to Private Lending and Note Investing.

We are not a course and not a coach. We are a consultant with the same credit background as the underwriters, credit officers, and workout specialists inside the banks your borrowers owe money to.

Doug Smith speaking on an industry lending panelDoug speaking on an industry panel. He answers questions from lenders and note investors in public forums nearly every day.

Ready to put a credit officer behind your portfolio?

Start with a short intake call at no charge. Tell us what you have raised and how you are lending it, and we will tell you which parts of the credit function you should keep and which you should hand off.

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