TBF Financial is celebrating 25 years in business this year. Robert Boehm and his sons, Brett and Adam, founded the company in 1998 with the goal of pioneering commercial debt buying in the equipment leasing industry.

“Debt buying was mostly unheard of in the commercial finance industry before TBF launched in 1998,” Brett Boehm, who is the CEO of TBF Financial, said. “Our principals believed we could buy charged-off equipment leases for prices that would be attractive to sellers yet also provide TBF with a margin of profit.”

This business model worked, and today TBF customers not only include equipment finance companies and banks but also fintechs, online small business lenders and merchant cash advance businesses.

“Debt buying and selling has become an established practice in commercial finance,” Brett Boehm said.

Headquartered in Chicago, TBF acquires commercial debt from finance businesses across the U.S. The company has managed commercial debt through every economic cycle over the past 25 years, including previous inflationary markets.

TBF buys pools of non-performing commercial accounts after they have been worked internally and reached the charge-off stage. These accounts include loans, equipment leases, lines of credit, MCAs and commercial credit cards. The accounts may have personal guarantees or no personal guarantees, be secured or unsecured, pre-agency or post-agency, or pre-litigation and/or reduced to judgment.

Brett Boehm said the company offers competitive pricing based on decades of historical data and the assets’ fair market value. “We always have cash on hand to close the deal immediately,” Brett Boehm said.

Selling off all or a portion of commercial debt allows collections teams to focus on accounts earlier in the delinquency cycle when recoveries are more likely. It also reduces the risk of lower payoffs in the future, according to Brett Boehm.

“We work professionally with debtors over time to collect as much as possible. Our hope is that the debtor will someday be in a better position to do business again with the seller as a customer in good standing. We also maintain accounts and do not resell them, which enables sellers to repurchase an account should any significant changes occur post-sale,” Brett Boehm said.