Last Thursday I got invited to one of those days that reminds you why you live where you live.
Afternoon Tigers game. Perfect weather. Walk-off home run.
Then over to Ford Field for the Lions draft party.
At some point during the evening, I found myself lining up a five-yard field goal attempt on the actual Ford Field turf.
I played soccer my whole life. Kicking a ball is as natural to me as anything. I stepped up thinking — this is going to be easy.
But then I watched the 20 people ahead of me.
Shank after shank after shank.
Balls going sideways. People tripping over themselves. A few who barely made contact at all.
95% of them completely botched it.
And somewhere in the middle of all that — I started doubting myself.
Maybe this is harder than I think. Maybe I’m not as ready as I feel. Maybe I should be nervous.
I stepped up anyway. Trusted what I knew. Trusted the preparation.
Split the uprights.
The noise around you can make you doubt perfectly sound preparation.
That’s the thought I kept coming back to this week.
Because this month I’ve now sat across from three separate commercial borrowers who received news they never saw coming.
Their accounts had been moved to special loans.
Three different businesses. Three different industries. Same story each time.
Long-standing bank relationships — decades in some cases. One borrower had been with their bank for 40 years. Loans being serviced. No defaults. Good customers by any measure.
And then the call came. Or the envelope arrived.
Their account was no longer being managed locally. It had been moved to a special loans unit in Toronto.
None of them saw it coming.
Here’s what I think is happening.
Canadian banks are tightening. Quietly and proactively — and in specific industries.
The most recent borrower I met with has significant exposure to the automotive sector. If you’re paying attention, you already know what that industry is dealing with right now — tariff uncertainty, looming CUSMA negotiations, a market that could look very different in 18 months.
The bank is well secured. The borrower is coming off one difficult year. But 40 years of relationship didn’t protect them when the bank decided to get cautious about the industry.
And here’s the thing that keeps nagging at me.
When banks move this proactively — not because a borrower defaulted, but because of where an entire industry is heading — you have to ask yourself:
Are they being overly conservative?
Or do they know something we don’t?
I don’t have a definitive answer. But when three of these situations land on my desk in the same month, it’s worth paying attention to.
Once you’re in special loans — the bank is done working with you. They’re working on you. Big difference.
Their only objective at that point is protecting their own position. That’s not a criticism. It’s just how special loans departments operate.
And finding a new lender becomes its own problem. Any institution you approach sees the designation and immediately asks why your current bank wants out. You’re not impossible to refinance — but you’re negotiating from weakness instead of strength. That changes everything. The terms. The timeline. The leverage you have.
The borrowers I’m meeting with are smart, experienced operators. They built real businesses over decades.
They just made one very common assumption.
That a long relationship with their bank would give them some protection when things got difficult.
It doesn’t. Not always. And especially not when an entire industry falls out of favour with a lender’s credit department.
The businesses I see come through difficult periods in the best shape aren’t necessarily the ones with the cleanest balance sheets.
They’re the ones who played offence before they needed to.
They restructured their financing when their business was performing — not when they were under pressure. They built relationships with more than one source of capital. They had contingency arrangements in place before they needed them.
Because when you need options, the worst time to start looking is after the envelope arrives.
If your business has real exposure to automotive, trucking, or any industry carrying serious uncertainty right now — it’s worth having a conversation about your financing structure before your bank has one about you.
Not out of panic.
Out of preparation.
At UCC Mortgage Co., based in Windsor, Ontario, we work with business owners across Canada to review financing structures, build access to multiple sources of capital, and ensure they’re positioned before market conditions force a decision.
There’s a big difference between the two.
Until next time,
Vince
P.S. The field goal felt a lot better once I stopped watching everyone else and just trusted what I knew. Most things do.
