MCA Lender Criteria Change Management: Keep Routing Rules Current
A practical workflow for recording, validating, publishing, and reviewing MCA lender criteria changes before they create bad submissions.
Separate published criteria from team assumptions
Start with information the partner actually provided: accepted industries, restricted industries, revenue or deposit expectations, time in business, geography, position limits, requested amounts, document requirements, and any other stated conditions. Keep internal observations and rep notes in a separate field. A recent decline may be useful context, but it should not silently become a universal lender rule without confirmation.
Record the source and effective date
Every change should include the source, date received, effective date if one was given, the partner contact, and the original message or document. Summarize exactly what changed instead of replacing the prior guideline with no explanation. If an update arrives through a call or chat, send it back to the partner for confirmation when the detail could materially affect routing. This gives operations a record to resolve conflicting instructions later.
Translate guidance into reviewable fields
Convert confirmed guidance into consistent fields only where the language supports it. Keep ranges, allowed values, exclusions, required documents, and conditional notes distinct. Do not turn “case by case” into a hard cutoff or assume an unstated rule. When a criterion cannot be expressed cleanly, leave it as a visible manual-review condition so the matching workflow does not create false certainty.
Review conflicts before publishing the change
Compare the proposed update with the current criteria record, active exceptions, and any partner-specific routing logic. A new minimum may conflict with an older product tier; an industry restriction may apply only in one state; a document request may apply only above a certain amount. Assign a reviewer who understands the relationship and can either approve the change, return it for clarification, or publish it with a clearly defined exception.
Version the rules instead of overwriting history
Keep the prior version, its active dates, and the person who approved each change. Mark one version as current for new routing while preserving the criteria that applied when an earlier package was submitted. If a lender reverses or narrows an update, create another version rather than editing the old record. That history helps the team explain why a deal was routed a certain way without relying on someone’s inbox.
Recheck active deals that the update may affect
A criteria change should identify open packages that were matched, queued, or submitted under the prior version. Review only the deals touched by the changed field, then decide whether to continue, confirm an exception, choose another partner, or wait for clarification. Do not automatically withdraw a live submission unless the partner or the applicable process requires it. Record the decision and owner so sales and operations see the same next step.
Run a regular stale-criteria review
Use a recurring queue for criteria records with no recent confirmation, conflicting partner messages, temporary exceptions nearing their end date, unpublished changes, and active deals waiting on clarification. Prioritize partners receiving current submission volume. The goal is not to ask every lender for a complete policy on a fixed schedule; it is to surface the rules most likely to affect routing and give each uncertainty a named owner.