The State wants the base, the bank wants the margin, the entrepreneur pays both

After nearly twenty years, the final thesis is not that banks are evil or that credit should be cheap; it is that price is a consequence of where the fear lives — and the job of whoever designs is to step back one stage and reorganize the risk.

The debate on corporate credit in 2025 is contaminated by a tempting number: 49% per year. It circulates as if it were the average rate of all credit to companies. It is not. Central Bank aggregates sit far below that, while certain unsecured, revolving, or short-term lines can approach or exceed that level. The correction does not weaken the thesis. It strengthens it. The entrepreneur does not pay a single Brazilian rate; he pays the product that was pushed on him when he arrived without structure.

The State wants the base, the bank wants the margin, the entrepreneur pays both. Taxes, reserve requirements, cost of capital, regulation, defaults, expenses, and concentration enter the price. But the individual contract adds another layer: the debtor's inability to present a risk financeable through different channels. He arrives with urgency, incomplete documents, mixed assets, and collateral already committed. The bank does not need to design. It offers the most profitable shelf compatible with the limit.

An average of corporate credit hides worlds. Large companies issue debentures, raise money abroad, negotiate secured lines, and access the capital market. Small companies use overdrafts, guaranteed accounts, receivables discounting, cards, and working capital. Putting them all in one number is statistically correct and economically useless. The average entrepreneur does not live at the average rate; he lives in the tail of the product he manages to contract.

That is why repeating "corporate rates at 49%" as a general truth would be an error of authority. The attentive reader will find the correct series and conclude that the whole argument was built on exaggeration. We do not need it. It is enough to observe the difference between lines, the persistence of high spreads, and the cost of unsecured credit. Indignation gains reach with big numbers; the thesis gains duration with exact ones.

The relevant question is why a company accepts credit at forty, fifty, or more percent per year. Sometimes because the margin supports a short bridge. Sometimes because losing inventory, payroll, or a supplier costs more. Often because the borrower computes the installment, not the rate, and believes future cash will solve it. The short-term product monetizes urgency. The bank does not sell capital; it sells time in small, expensive packages.

The State's cost also appears indirectly. Taxes on intermediation, regulatory requirements, and the financing of public debt raise the alternative return. When the government pays liquidity well at sovereign risk, private credit must offer more. The entrepreneur competes with the Treasury for domestic capital. Then he is told he should invest to raise productivity. The country charges a premium to finance production and calls the result a lack of entrepreneurial ambition.

The bank, in turn, exercises real power. Concentration, proprietary data, the current account, and collateral create dependence. An institution knows the client's history, but that knowledge is not fully portable. The entrepreneur changes banks and becomes unknown again. The information that should reduce risk becomes a competitive barrier. The good payer has no financial reputation; the bank has a private dossier on him.

Open Finance promises to reduce part of this, but transported data is not transported decision. Another institution must interpret, trust, and integrate. The company must consent and understand. Fraud and categorization quality limit models. The infrastructure is progress, not magic. The price will fall when new creditors can use the data to control flow and recover capital, not merely to offer another card.

The biggest blind spot lies outside the banking system. Companies finance one another at gigantic scale. Suppliers grant thirty, sixty, or ninety days to close the sale. Distributors raise limits to hit quotas. Manufacturers carry clients who should already have been blocked. This commercial credit does not appear in the interest-rate headlines, but it consumes capital, generates losses, and can break the supplier. The entrepreneur complains about the bank while running a free bank for his clients.

A corporate credit decision platform should start there. Before the sale, evaluate existing exposure, behavior, margin, sector, and concentration. Recommend limit, tenor, down payment, collateral, and collection terms. Then monitor events, invoices, protests, corporate changes, and delays. The value is not in saying whether someone has a bad record. It is in deciding whether to sell, how much, on what terms, and when to stop.

Such a system turns credit from reaction into policy. Today, the commercial area grants and the financial area collects. The incentives are opposed. The salesperson earns commission on billing, not collection; the finance team inherits the client after the risk has been taken. A mature structure ties compensation to the quality of the revenue and makes collection start at the contract. Default is not born at maturity; it is born in the bad approval.

The bank can better finance a company that controls its own commercial credit. Verifiable portfolios, consistent limits, and documented collection make receivables more financeable. Thus an operational tool reduces banking cost indirectly. The debtor stops presenting only billing and starts presenting an asset with performance data. Technology does not negotiate a few points; it changes the financed object.

My position in 2025 would be to invest less in the "cheap digital bank" narrative and more in the infrastructure that enables design. Registrars, receivables systems, vertical analysis, automated collection, collateral agents, and platforms connecting operations to capital. Loan distribution has become a commodity. Exclusive information, control, and recovery remain scarce.

In banks, I would assess the sustainability of margins in the face of Open Finance, fintechs, and the capital market, but I would not bet on a fast collapse. Incumbents have funding, trust, data, and cross-selling capacity. The most dangerous attack will not come from a fintech charging less on the same loan. It will come from systems that keep the client from needing that loan or that turn his assets into instruments financeable by others.

For companies, I would separate three boxes. Short-term operational credit for the cash cycle; investment debt with the asset's tenor; and risk capital for uncertainty that should not be promised as repayment. Mixing the three produces destruction. Startups finance experiments with debt; manufacturers finance long machinery with working capital; entrepreneurs finance recurring losses with prepayment. The problem is not only the rate. It is using the right obligation for the wrong risk.

I would also preserve collateral. The Collateral Framework allows better use, but every committed asset reduces future options. A company that extracts the maximum from its property today may discover tomorrow it has no collateral left to renegotiate. Loan-to-value should be a survival limit, not an efficiency target. The creditor likes full collateral; the debtor should like slack.

A 49% rate can be economically rational in a very short operation with high returns and certain payment. It can be suicidal in permanent capital. Annualizing short costs frightens, but ignoring annualization deceives. The analysis must combine absolute cost, duration, and the return on the use. The problem with the public discourse is picking one number and removing the contract around it.

The entrepreneur must compute the effective cost in reais, the break-even point, and the delay scenario. How much additional profit must the money generate? What happens if the revenue arrives thirty days late? Is there a prepayment penalty? Which collateral gets blocked? The bank wins because many clients know the installment and ignore the economic transaction. Corporate financial education begins with the purpose, not the formula.

The State should reduce registration friction, improve recovery, and allow competition, instead of announcing episodic lines for every crisis. Public guarantees can answer systemic shocks, as in 2020, but they should not replace the market. The goal is for good risks to be recognized without a godfather and for bad risks to be refused before consuming public wealth.

Brazilian corporate credit will remain expensive where risk is indistinguishable. Some sectors, lines, and companies will pay close to 49%; others much less. The inequality of price is part of the information. The job is not to pretend a single rate exists and fight it. It is to build paths for the company to leave the wrong line.

The State wants the base, the bank wants the margin, and the entrepreneur pays both. But there is a third charge, self-inflicted: the price of disorganization. A company that does not know its own cycle, grants terms without a policy, mixes assets, and seeks capital in an emergency hands power to the branch. No revolt against interest rates fixes that.

The final thesis, after nearly twenty years, is not that banks are evil or that credit should be cheap. It is that price is a consequence of where the fear lives. In 2008, trust died and collateral survived. In 2020, the public guarantee displaced the fear. In 2023, a badly presented debt destroyed legibility. In 2025, the entrepreneur still looks at the rate as the cause. The job of whoever designs is to step back one stage and reorganize the risk.

I would not publish "corporate rates at 49%, the highest since 2017" without qualifying the line and the series. I would publish something harder to refute: "some companies pay close to 49% because they arrive at the bank with a problem that only fits the most expensive product." The first sentence produces indignation. The second produces a business.

Leo Bentier