Most sourcing shops send one-page teasers. Credit committees throw them in the trash. A DealScale credit brief is built for the opposite outcome: your analyst opens it, and by page three they're already drafting a preliminary term sheet.
What's inside a DealScale brief
- Business overview. What the company does, who the end customer is, and why revenue is what it is — written in the same register an analyst would use internally.
- Three years of financial performance. Revenue, gross margin, EBITDA, and working capital trends. Adjusted figures are flagged with bridge detail.
- Sponsor and ownership structure. Who owns it, who's driving the transaction, and what their prior exits look like.
- Use of proceeds and deal thesis. Why capital is needed now, and what a sensible structure would look like from the borrower's perspective.
- Key risks. Customer concentration, regulatory exposure, cyclicality — called out honestly so your credit team isn't surprised in diligence.
- Mandate-fit scoring. Why this specific brief was routed to you: deal size, sector, geography, structure type.
Why this shortens your cycle
A typical direct lending cycle — from first-touch to signed term sheet — runs 6–10 weeks, with a meaningful chunk spent on triage: is this deal real, is the sponsor legit, does the data support the story? An underwriting-ready brief collapses that triage to a single read. We've seen partner funds move from first read to term sheet in under three weeks on DealScale-originated deals.
What we don't do
We don't write the credit memo. We don't replace your underwriting team. We don't tell you what price to offer. The brief exists to move a qualified borrower through your top-of-funnel as efficiently as possible, with no surprises. Your analysts still do the work they're paid to do — they just start from mile 5, not mile 0.
Book a call to see a real sample brief in your mandate.