Beyond Generic Consulting: How We Solve Specific Banking Problems
Six consulting services. Each built to answer a question your bank can't — or won't — address on your behalf. Established in 2021, we've documented $4.7M in client savings by doing one thing well: making banking relationships transparent.
Fixed-fee engagements · Written scope before work begins · Zero bank commissions
Commercial Lending Advisory: Decode Your Term Sheet Before You Sign
What Is Your Term Sheet Actually Offering?
Decode what your term sheet is actually offering. Identify hidden covenant restrictions before you sign. Compare offers across lenders with apples-to-apples analysis. Negotiate from a position of knowledge — not hope. This is the service that put EasyWeb Consulting on the map, and it remains the engagement most clients begin with.
Typical clients carry $5M–$200M in outstanding commercial credit and discover their existing terms were negotiable all along. Led by Priya Chandrasekaran, CFA Level III Candidate and former commercial credit analyst at Coast Capital Savings, every term sheet review draws on her experience evaluating over 200 credit packages from the lender's side of the table. That dual perspective — understanding both the borrower's operational reality and the bank's credit decision framework — is what makes the analysis sharper than anything you'll get from your banker or your accountant alone.
Key deliverables: term sheet analysis, covenant package review, cross-default provision identification, lender comparison matrices, negotiation support briefs, credit presentation development, and banking presentation coaching.
Typical engagement timeline: 2–4 weeks for a single term sheet review; 4–6 weeks for multi-lender comparison and negotiation support.
Got Questions About a Term Sheet?Want the full deep dive? See our Commercial Lending Advisory page for case studies, loan types, and covenant explainers.
Five More Ways We Save You Money and Cut Through Banking Complexity
How much is your current banking relationship costing you in hidden fees, unreviewed covenants, or outdated processes? Here's why that matters — each of these services was built to answer a specific, recurring problem we kept encountering in client engagements. Every service follows the same five operating principles: clarity before action, full transparency, disciplined communication, and an honest debrief at the end.
Banking Relationship Audits
How much are you paying your bank — and for what, exactly? Most businesses can't answer that question. A structured review of your entire banking ecosystem: account structures, fee schedules, credit facilities, treasury services, and payment processing. We identify fee leakage (overcharges, unused services still being billed), structural inefficiencies, and opportunities to renegotiate. Delivered as a prioritized report with estimated financial impact.
Here's what that looks like in practice: for Meridian Pacific Properties, a Burnaby commercial real estate developer with a ~$185M portfolio, our audit uncovered 11 distinct covenants across three banking relationships — including an inadvertent DSCR breach nobody had flagged. The result was a consolidation from 3 to 2 banks, covenants reduced from 11 to 6, and $648,000 in annual savings from a 35 basis point rate reduction. Most audits for mid-size businesses take 3–4 weeks and pay for themselves within the first quarter.
Deliverables: fee analysis report, account structure recommendations, renegotiation brief, estimated annual savings calculation, covenant inventory with risk assessment.
Credit Union Process Optimization
Why do your members wait 47 days for a commercial loan that should close in 22? We map existing processes, benchmark against comparable institutions, identify friction through staff and member interviews, and deliver redesigned workflows with implementation timelines. Most commonly applied to lending turnaround time, member onboarding, and commercial banking service delivery.
This service draws on Marcus Devereaux's operational planning discipline from the Canadian Armed Forces — process mapping, bottleneck identification, and phased implementation are exactly the same skills he applied during domestic wildfire response in British Columbia. The difference is the context: instead of coordinating logistics for 500 personnel, we're coordinating approvals for $5M commercial agricultural loans. The discipline is identical. When we optimized Fraser Valley Agricultural Credit Union's lending workflow, originations increased 31% and application-to-funding time dropped from 47 to 22 days. Engagements typically run 6–10 weeks.
Deliverables: process maps (current and redesigned), benchmark analysis against comparable institutions, friction point identification with root-cause analysis, redesigned workflows, phased implementation plans with accountability assignments.
Regulatory Compliance Advisory
Is your institution ready for the next OSFI guideline revision — or will you find out the hard way? Advisory focused on the regulatory environment governing Canadian banking and credit unions. OSFI guideline interpretation (B-13, B-15, E-21, B-20), FINTRAC AML/ATF compliance program reviews, FCAC consumer protection compliance, and provincial credit union regulatory requirements.
Led by Derek Okafor, CAMS, LL.B (Osgoode Hall), who spent six years in financial services regulatory law at a mid-size Vancouver firm before joining EasyWeb. Derek's approach is practical, not academic: he reads the regulation, explains what it means for your operations, identifies the gaps, and delivers a remediation roadmap with timelines. His screen-sharing walkthroughs of compliance frameworks are, candidly, clearer than most in-person presentations — which is why roughly 40% of our regulatory advisory engagements are delivered virtually across Canada.
Deliverables: regulatory gap analysis, compliance program review, FINTRAC readiness assessment, policy change recommendations, board-ready compliance summary, remediation roadmap with implementation priorities.
RFP Management for Banking Services
When was the last time your organization tested the market for banking services? If the answer is "never" or "more than five years ago," the cost of inertia might surprise you. End-to-end RFP management — drafting, evaluation criteria, submission management, and committee facilitation. Used primarily by municipalities, universities, hospitals, and large nonprofits.
Here's why this service exists: the City of Langley had the same banking agreement for 11 years without competitive review. Their Director of Finance suspected overpayment but lacked the capacity to benchmark or run an RFP. We benchmarked fee structures against four comparable BC municipalities, drafted the RFP, facilitated the evaluation committee, and delivered a 34% fee reduction — $127,000 per year — without changing banks. The incumbent simply hadn't been tested. Most RFP processes for municipal or institutional banking services span 10–14 weeks from kickoff to committee recommendation.
Deliverables: RFP document, evaluation criteria matrix (weighted for service quality, transition risk, and price), proposal comparison analysis, committee facilitation, anonymized benchmarking data from comparable institutions, transition risk assessment.
Digital Banking & Core System Advisory
Three vendors, three architectures, three incomparable proposals. Sound familiar? We translate between technical vendor language and executive decision-making requirements. Core banking system migrations, digital channel rollouts, open banking API readiness, and mobile platform strategy.
Led by Tomás Arriaga, M.Sc. Computer Science (University of Victoria), former Product Manager at Finastra, who spent five years building digital banking middleware for Finastra's North American clients. Tomás developed a 42-criteria evaluation framework across 6 categories — functionality, architecture, integration, vendor stability, total cost of ownership, and implementation risk — specifically because no comparable framework existed for Canadian credit unions evaluating core platforms. When Pacific Rim Credit Union faced three incompatible vendor proposals for a $3.2M investment, Tomás's framework delivered a unanimous board recommendation and a cloud-native selection that saved $1.4M over seven years versus the preferred hybrid option. Engagements typically run 12–16 weeks.
Deliverables: vendor evaluation framework (42 criteria across 6 categories), total cost of ownership models, data migration plans, integration architecture review, post-implementation assessment, board presentation package.
Looking for personal banking advisory? We also help individuals and institutions with student banking programs, CD/GIC strategy, overdraft protection reviews, and complex personal banking navigation.
Beyond Claims: How Five Clients Got Measurable Results
What does the work actually produce? Think of it this way — every engagement ends with a number attached. Here are five of them. Each case study follows the same structure we use internally: situation, approach, and verifiable result.
Fraser Valley Agricultural Credit Union
$480M community credit union serving agricultural producers across the Fraser Valley. 23% decline in new commercial agricultural lending over 18 months. 47-day average application-to-funding time — nearly double the regional average. Staff interviews revealed seven handoff points between initial application and funding, three of which involved redundant documentation requests. Member interviews identified the turnaround time as the primary reason for defecting to Schedule I banks.
Meridian Pacific Properties Ltd.
Commercial real estate developer in Burnaby. 6 mixed-use projects, ~$185M portfolio. Three separate banking relationships, 11 distinct covenants, 20 hours/month on covenant reporting, and an inadvertent DSCR covenant breach that had gone undetected for two quarters. The CFO, Martin Beaulieu, was spending more time on bank compliance than on project finance — a situation that had become operationally unsustainable during a period of active construction on three simultaneous sites.
City of Langley
Municipality with ~$90M annual operating budget. Same banking agreement for 11 years without review or competitive process. The Director of Finance, Nina Petrovic, suspected overpayment for cash management, payroll processing, and investment custodial services — but lacked the internal capacity to benchmark against comparable municipalities or run a formal procurement process. We benchmarked against four BC municipalities (population 25,000–40,000) and managed the full RFP cycle over 12 weeks.
Cascadia HealthTech Inc.
Vancouver health-tech startup. 45 employees, $8M Series A, SaaS platform processing $320K/month — all running through a consumer chequing account. Transaction limits were being hit monthly, there was no FX capability for US-based customers, and payroll was processed manually. Co-founder Dr. Amara Singh described the situation candidly: nobody had told them there was another way. Priya Chandrasekaran built a banking requirements document that three commercial bankers described as the most thorough intake package they'd received from a company that size.
Pacific Rim Credit Union
$1.1B credit union, 14 branches across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. Board-approved $3.2M tech investment, three incompatible vendor proposals, no internal expertise for evaluation. The evaluation committee couldn't make an apples-to-apples comparison because each vendor used different terminology, different pricing models, and different implementation assumptions. Tomás Arriaga applied his 42-criteria evaluation framework and facilitated a structured vendor demonstration process that gave the board confidence in the recommendation.
Beyond Marketing: What We're Actually Thinking About
What are the banking problems nobody talks about until they become expensive? Here's what's on our whiteboard this quarter. These articles draw on real patterns from our engagements — anonymized, but grounded in the same analytical rigour we apply to client work.
What Your Covenant Package Is Actually Saying — A Line-by-Line Translation
Most business owners sign commercial credit agreements without fully understanding the financial covenants they're agreeing to maintain. DSCR requirements, leverage ratios, reporting deadlines, cure periods — here's what each provision means operationally. We walk through a sample covenant package clause by clause, flagging the provisions that carry the most operational risk and the ones that are almost always negotiable. If you've ever signed a renewal without reading the covenant schedule, this is the article that explains why that matters.
Read Our Lending Advisory Deep DiveThe Hidden Cost of Banking Loyalty: When "Good Enough" Costs Six Figures
Long-standing banking relationships often drift into complacency. Using anonymized data from five real engagements — including the City of Langley's 11-year unreviewed agreement and Meridian Pacific's inadvertent covenant breach — here's the cumulative cost of not periodically reviewing your banking relationship. The numbers are consistent: businesses that haven't benchmarked their banking in more than five years are overpaying by an average of 15–30% on fee-based services alone.
See the Case StudiesYour Bank Changed Your Account Manager Again — Here's What to Do in the First 30 Days
Relationship manager turnover is one of the most disruptive and underappreciated risks in commercial banking. When Hargrove & Sons Construction lost their 30-year account manager to an internal reassignment, they discovered that everything about their credit relationship had been underwritten on personal knowledge rather than institutional documentation. A concrete 30-day action plan for when your primary contact disappears — including what to document, what to request, and how to protect your existing terms during the transition.
Talk to Us About Your SituationWhat's Your Banking Relationship Actually Costing You?
Most businesses we audit discover $50,000–$200,000 in annual savings or improved terms they didn't know were available. A 30-minute conversation costs nothing. The status quo might be costing six figures. We've been doing this since 2021 — advising both sides of the counter from our Surrey headquarters — and our 91% client retention rate tells you whether the first engagement delivers value.
Let's Talk About Your SituationFixed-fee engagements · No bank commissions · Written scope before work begins · (617) 272-9375