Andrew Pace
Welcome to ACS Portfolio Perspective. I’m your host, Andrew Pace, Chief Client Experience Officer at ACS. Today I’m joined by Jeffry Elliott, founder and CEO of Elevex Capital. Jeffry brings more than three decades of equipment finance experience to this conversation. He spent much of his career at Huntington National Bank where he rose to president of Huntington Asset Finance and helped scale the platform to more than $27 billion in assets, earning a place among the top five bank-owned leasing companies in the United States. Along the way, Jeffry built Huntington’s public finance business from the ground up to over $2 billion, led more than $1 billion in renewable energy project finance originations, and played a key role in major emerging activity, including the TCF Bank transaction. He’s A certified lease and finance professional, a board director and treasurer of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, and published author on funding strategy, portfolio syndication, and securitization. In January 2025, Jeffry founded Elevex Capital, a diversified and technology-enabled equipment finance platform backed by Sallyport, focused on middle market and specialty segments that banks are increasingly stepping away from. Jeffry, welcome to the show.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Thanks for having me. 

Andrew Pace   4:41
It’s an honor to have you on. 

Jeffry, you spent several decades inside a large bank environment and now lead an independent platform. I want to start by talking about what has changed structurally in the market and why it feels like a turning point. So from your perspective, how is the deposit versus lending tension reshaping commercial banks, and why does equipment finance tend to be one of the first areas impacted?

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, yeah, so that’s kind of core to my thesis on the current and future market of equipment finance. The regional banks are really focused on deposit lending right now, as deposits are, in the United States, are slowly shrinking. You know, there are alternative investments out there. So it’s a challenge for banks to get enough deposits to do all the lending that they want to lend in the marketplace. So they’re gobbling each other up to acquire more deposits. And along with that, the technology spin that they have to incur to meet all the regulatory requirements and other requirements is pushing them to be larger and larger. So my thesis is, you know, to gain the deposits, they’ve got to get larger. To cover the technology costs, they’ve got to get larger. If you look back at like the Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank failures. What happened was they were some of the weaker regionals. And when an event in the marketplace happened, their deposits just ran out of their bank, easy. 

Technology enables people to move deposits very quickly, or company deposits very quickly. And so they go to the money center banks, when there’s a scare in the marketplace and then the lowest performing regionals at that time, doesn’t mean they necessarily did anything wrong, just lose their deposit base quickly. So it’s a challenge and it’s a battle for them. So in an effort to do that, consolidate, get larger, and reduce their loan to deposit ratio, they are looking at select areas within their business models that don’t really raise deposits or they don’t feel like raises deposits. So they want to protect their full primary bank customers that have deposits, working capital lines, those typically go along with deposits. Equipment finance or auto finance or some real estate finance, other types of type of typical transactional finance areas. They don’t view as deposit gathering. So they’re starting to trim those. I say they get out of them entirely, but they’re trimming them. So where do they trim them? In areas that that certainly don’t raise deposits or areas where they view are more risky. So why bother? They’re less focused, and I hate to say this, on profitability, than they are in poor primary bank relationships that contain deposits. So they want to lend the people that bring their total relationship.

And it makes a lot of sense. But what does that mean for the general public? That means that they’re pulling back in some of the areas or some of the sectors of the economy that need their services the most, need lending the most. That creates opportunity. 

Who used to fill that opportunity was GE Capital. GE Capital was a major player, the number one player in our marketplace. And when they pulled out, that left a whole segment of the economy, kind of that double B to single B credit profile space that banks would, they’ll play in that space if they’re primary bank, you know, in deposits and they know the customer really well. But if it’s just a transaction, they kind of tend to avoid that space, especially the single B space. And GE used to thrive there. Structured transactions, mitigate the risks in those credits. Those are pass rated credits from an OCC perspective, but they’re just, they’ve got challenges, right? They’re either not that large, maybe they’re 50 million in revenues or they don’t have consistent cash flow or they’re in an industry that leverages up more than typical manufacturers leverage up, like an aerial lift rental house, something like that, right? They’re going to carry more leverage than a manufacturer, and they should. They have really good cash flow if they’re utilizing their equipment properly.

But banks decide, you know, that’s a little too high risk for me. We get criticized on it. So we pull back in that space. So those little pockets throughout the economy, agriculture, transportation, rental, those types of things, energy, are areas where banks are being very selective. They’re still operating there, but they’re being selective in how they lend there, creates a lot of opportunity.
And it’s really the space that GE Capital. If you look at a lot of the large new independents, they’re ex-GE Capital people. Now, my company’s got a few, but we’re not based on that. But I used to compete with them and respect them very much. So it was a great competitor. 

The other thing that goes along with that is the banks just, and GE Capital being gone, they were the big training sources. So not a lot of training going on in the industry. I know we’ll talk about that as we go along, but that’s a big part of what Elevex is about. So when you see that in the old days, in the 60s and 70s, banks, you know, they were just being able to do the lending, the leasing product. So they were supportive of the leasing industry before they were physically allowed to do leasing. And so they were more secondary markets, lending to leasing companies, wholesalers in the space. And I kind of view that as their role going forward. Lender finance is a great business for them because they lend to independent leasing companies. They get their deposits. So it’s more of a traditional banking relationship. 

And again, we’ll still buy and sell and trade deals with banks. They’ll have a capital markets division. They just may not originate as much directly as they used to, is my theory going forward. Some have already done that. Some are starting to do it. You know, if you look at some of the, you know, Citibank’s not really in the leasing business anymore, a huge, huge player.

But you’ll see the market change over time. And I think it’s a good time for independence. Now, this could all change if deposit raising becomes good or they merge enough and there’s enough deposits for the big guys to, and they look for income, then they might go back to leasing product. The equipment finance product in banks is one of the more profitable products. So they don’t give it up lightly because it really creates a lot of income. But when they get down to it, what they’re really focused on are core banking relationships that bring deposits. And because those transactions don’t necessarily do that, they’ll forego that higher profitability for lower profitability loans with the funding that comes with it in the low cost deposits. So it’s just their strategy and I think it’s an opportunity for independents to take a bigger chunk in the marketplace.

Andrew Pace
Thank you, thank you. So, let’s go back to GE Capital’s exit and what that really meant for the middle marker borrowers. Have you noticed the void of their exit being filled?

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yes, yeah. So not entirely, but so if you look at some of our competitors, you know, the Cap Terrace, Ainsley Park, Wings Beyer, Dex, those type players, those are kind of the replacements for GE Capital. A lot of those are those guys, not Dexed as much, but Cap Terrace and Ainsley Park and Wingspire, very much focused on sponsor backed, larger type, $100 million revenue, $15 million EBITDA type company, structured financing. They do some leases, but mostly loans or loan type structuring.

They’re all really well-run companies and they’re doing great. Got tons of business and accessing the capital markets and doing great. And they’re really playing in that XGE space. But it’s a big space. So there’s plenty of room for a lot of competitors.

We’ll play in that space a little bit. We’re not really following sponsors or EPE sponsors around. We’re more general in nature and probably a little bit down market. I mean, we have some big deals that are $100 million plus and even publicly traded entities, but we’re focused probably more on below $100 million revenue companies. We have a small ticket segment. We’re in all different segments.

And we’re very focused on true leases. So we want to own assets and take residual risk and really be an asset player more than just a credit player. So we obviously have credit policy and credit’s the first thing we look at, but we’re also weighing that asset and we’re structuring around the asset quality. So we tend to do more hard assets that we can liquidate, commodity type assets or in-place value assets. And quite honestly, I like in-place value more than I like out-of-place value assets. And we could talk about that after all day. But, you know, when you got a good business model and you got a good in-place asset, that’s essential. That’s a really good situation from a leasing company perspective.

And so, you know, we’re looking at all those types of deals from a true lessor perspective. As we go down market into more small business and small ticket, it becomes more loans, unfortunately. I’ll always push for more leases down there because I still think there’s benefits for customers to use the leasing product. They’re just, they’ve been burned by it or they’re not aware of it. They don’t understand it.

And so a lot of times they push towards EFAs and loans. So we do a lot of that too. But yeah, I think that the marketplace is still expanding in that GE capital range. And the pool’s getting wider because the banks keep pulling farther and farther. They’re getting bigger deals. The banks are getting bigger. They want bigger deals. They want, you know, bigger clients. So there’s a huge market. I forget the percentage of companies that are under like 20 million in revenue, but it’s a huge number, right? So there’s tons of small businesses out there. And even under 50 million, it’s still a large share. There aren’t that many, you know, really large companies in the United States. So they’re all fighting over the same ones, which is what drives down that pricing to, you know, really low levels. But, you know, you can compete with even on those transactions when you’re an independent and you’re taking residual positions. A lot of the banks don’t have asset managers or have retiring asset managers and don’t want to take residual risk, losing their skills in structuring true leases. And, you know, I run into people all the time that all they do is loans. Last couple of decades, banks have been loan focused, right? Especially in things like aircraft. You know, in the early 2000s, a lot of mistakes on too high residuals on corporate aircraft, right? So they’ve gone to loan only product, right? Most of the banks are that way. Some will do a little bit. So it’s becoming more of a commoditized industry. And, you know, here at Elevex, we want to be that other choice, right? The true lease versus all those loan options, we won’t be the lowest cost from an implicit rate perspective, but we’ll have the benefits of leasing. And overall, that may be a better option for a customer if they need that flexibility and those options of a true lease scenario. 

Andrew Pace
Sure. So that backdrop explains why the opportunity exists. So it makes Elevex compelling is how intentionally it was built to operate in this new environment. So when you founded Elevex, what was the core thesis around being a true lessor willing to hold assets and that residual risk?

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, our ownership at Sally Port Partnership Fund had the concept. They were in the factoring business and they kept getting asked for equipment finance as they owned that factory business for 10 years, they sold it to a bank. And they said, well, we should start an equipment finance company. So they came to me and said, we want to start it. equivalent finance company, we want you to be employee number one and build it. And they had a business plan. They weren’t equivalent finance people, right? They’re smart people, but not equivalent finance people. And their business plan was very good. I said, I like it. You know, you’re focusing on underserved markets and you see the opportunity, you see the banks pulling back.
And I said, I like that, but there are three things that I’d want Elevex to be invested in. And those 3 pillars are technology, capital markets, and asset management, right? In line with what you do, Andrew. So technology is first, right? So, you know, working at the banks, banks are big and bureaucratic and while they want to use the latest and greatest technology, they don’t move very fast, right? It’s like…Titanic in a bathtub type thing. This is hard to turn them around, right? And so frustrating not being able to use some of the latest and greatest technology. So we’re building a tech enabled and embedded finance, AI assisted platform. We’re not all the way there yet. We’re building things. We’ve got some AI agents doing some things, but it’s coming and we got a development team of engineers that are working on it every day. And some are full-time employees, some are contractors, you know, all kinds of things going on. But it’s really important that we operate differently, more efficiently, take the friction out of the process, both in small deals and large deals.

A lot of people out there don’t believe that there’s a need for technology on large deals. I disagree. I think there’s huge opportunity to process things more efficiently and quickly. I know of a deal we did last year. It’s a million four, not a huge deal. Customer came, the approval came to me and I’m like, these guys got $10 million cash on their balance sheet, no debt, and they want to do a deal with us at this high yield. And I’m like, why do they do this? Well, they got to have it done in two weeks. And their bank told them two months.

So they did it with us instead of their bank. The bank would have done it for half the implicit rate that we would have done it for, right? And so that’s a way, you know, taking the friction out of the transaction, being able to process things quickly. We’re starting to get there, but we really want to go fast. Right now, we credit score in under 30 minutes. We want to do credit intake, meaning the application intake, any way that you want to send it in, whether we’re typing it in, they’re, you know, emailing it in, they’re filling it in on our site. We have a dynamic app that helps AI, kind of helps you fill out the app, fills in things for you, and you verify it. But an app coming in, invoice coming in, credit approved, compliance, docs created, back out to the customer, signed, back to us, and funding. We’re going to be able to do all that in 3 minutes. That’s the goal. So, you know, we want to be able to do quick. Now, all things have to happen at the same time and have to be there and available. So sometimes you don’t have the invoice and you don’t have the serial number, whatever it is you’re doing. But if you can get it all together and you get the process working right, you can move really fast because you’re doing everything at the same time. You’re creating the docs. In the old days, you wouldn’t create docs until you got the credit approval, right? Well now you can create docs. Because it’s not a person creating, you’re not wasting time. It’s the system, right? AI is creating the docs or the system’s creating the docs. And if you never use them, so what? No one even knows the difference. It’s not like burning a piece of paper, it’s just in the system ready to go. But it’s ready to go when you’re ready to go. And you still got to clear all those things. So there’s still somewhat of a linear process, but not a total linear process.

So that’s kind of the tech platform. A lot of AI assistance. You’ll see us with AI agents on the phone with us or AI agents helping with collections, like on the phone with us. All types of different ways that the AI agents can help customers, customer service, those types of things.

Secondly, is our capital markets trading platform. We rolled that out at the funding conference, just the concept, and it’ll be 2027 type thing. But really, it’s about bringing all parties together. Elevex will be a market maker, not the only market maker. Others can do it, but you’ll have bid and ask spreads on transactions. You still do business with who you want to do business with. 

So if you’re a bank and you don’t like your Bank A and you don’t like Bank B, you don’t have to take a, do a deal with Bank B. You can just take them off your list. But you can post your deals and get more access to more potential buyers. You can put deals in portfolios. We can do lots of different things with transactions. We can have AI assist with documentation review. AI assists with credit. AI assist with the whole syndication documentation process, master assignment agreements, NDAs, all those things, and take the friction out of doing transactions in the marketplace. Also bring in a lot of new partners that don’t know everybody. You know, all the regional banks and big banks know each other. They don’t need Jeff to do this with his trading platform.

But my theory is they’ll end up coming to the trading platform because it’ll be easier to use, right? They’ll still talk to the same people at the banks. You’re not taking away the personal touch here. You’re just speeding it up by using technology. So that capital markets trading platform is key. It gives Elevex a lot of liquidity, but it’ll give everybody else a lot of liquidity and bring in new players. 

There’s 4,000 banks, over 4,000 banks in the United States. Most of them aren’t part of ELFA or any kind of trade association in the equivalent finance industry. They don’t even have equivalent finance divisions. One of our areas is we set up leasing companies for banks that don’t have it. And they’ve got deposits and money they want to spend or invest in equipment finance assets, but they don’t have access. So this brings them into that marketplace. 

And then lastly, asset management. As a true lessor, the number one risk we have is investing in residuals and assets. And so we need strong asset management. We got 2-30 plus year asset managers and we’re going to train up some new ones and really use that technology to, you know, scrape data from the internet to get real pricing intelligence, maintain a bunch of data on our systems. You know, most banks do asset management on spreadsheets and, you know, paper files and just like, they have all this information, but it’s just in the heads of their asset managers. They don’t have it in any kind of system that’s usable. So we’re going to build it into our systems so we can automatically update our curves and our residual positions and really know and be the most aggressive that makes sense in those asset classes. So it’s going to be a fun journey, bringing it all together and then training up new people to really understand that somewhat lost capability in our industry. We’re losing, you know, everyone’s retiring and no one’s trained in the new ones. So hopefully we can train up some new ones.

But you put those three things together and that’s what Elevex is about.

Andrew Pace
That’s great. So, you know, fast originations matter. You know, you talked about AI, but long-term success in this industry is ultimately proven through asset management workouts. Can you share a little bit why is the shortage of experienced asset managers becoming such a significant risk for the industry?

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, well, I think it starts with when banks really started shying away from residual, you know, true lease transactions. They just went, they’ve gone up market and credit. A lot of up market credits are not as focused on true leases or haven’t been over the last couple of decades. Kind of depends on the asset class.

But so they, to save money, I think they just allowed asset management to keep dwindling, right? As they retired, they didn’t replace them. They don’t have training programs. So nobody’s training them. A lot of asset managers either came out of GE or CIT or some of these places that would train them up. And so there’s just nobody building new ones, right? And so there’s just a lack of focus. But I think it started with, you know, they thought they needed them, and they do need them for residual positions, right? And once they got out of that, I think they just look at it as, yeah, we have a loan with a piece of collateral. Do I really need a specialist or can I just buy an appraisal from somebody if we need one? And I don’t really need to have asset management capabilities. And so you see a lot of banks going around that don’t have asset management. You see almost all, I mean, I’m a rare independent that has asset managers, unless you’re like a really residual driven company. And you just don’t see it much anymore. So there aren’t as many jobs. And I think some of it’s the going up market, lack of focus on true leases, and just the aging of the pool of candidates that have the experience and nobody has a training program. Yeah, I mean, so we’re going to try to train them up. 

Andrew Pace
Great. And how does Elevax approach asset management and workouts differently than the traditional banks would?

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, I mean, I think the knowledge is number one, right? We’re always looking at the asset. We have an exit strategy day one when we go into any transaction. You know, we’re not a distressed player, so we’re not expecting defaults and things like that, but we’re doing, you know, single B credit profiles. So they do default. There’s a chance there. So we’re aware of what we got to do. We try to partner with people like ACS and our vendors and our dealers out there so we know who to go to if we need to repossess an asset or take it back. You know, we have different strategies depending on how the customer is communicating with us. If they’re working with us, you know, we’re going to try to get a voluntary surrender, right? And then take that asset to somebody that’s going to help us remarket it. We did that just recently on some on some assets. If it’s, you know, a non-communicative situation, we’re going to go into regular replevin or repossession and grab those assets and get them out if we can, if they’re commodity type assets. You know, an essential in place value, we’re going to take a different approach, right? So each asset in and of itself has a different approach to it. You know, we had some assets. We acquired a company and they had some deals that we just took over servicing for we didn’t actually pay for. And they were still working them out. So we’re doing the workout for them. They were agriculture or farms, right? And, you know, we looked at the assets and our asset manager said, you know, the best way to do this is to auction them off at the farm when we’re auctioning off the whole farm itself, right? Because if you want to do it together, if you just throw them out of there, they’re going to raise a lot less than in there, even though some of them are commodity type agricultural asset. So we’re doing it in conjunction with the banks that have the real estate and it’s just going to be a more, you got to wait a little longer, but you got to be patient. 

I think a big difference between banks and leasing companies is timing. And it’s on both sides of the fence. Banks will be slow to react when there’s a problem because they want to, I mean, I hate to say this, I was this guy for 30 years, but they just kind of want to hope that it’s going to get better, right? They don’t realize when there’s a challenge. They just want to, you know, follow their write-off policy and not go get the asset. We’re not like that. If they’re not working with us, we’re moving, right? So that’s number one, work faster. But then on the other side, when somebody’s struggling, we try to help them, right? You know, we’ll do a deferment. Now we’re going to get paid for doing a deferment. But you know, a guy’s struggling. We’re supposed to be helping them, not hurting them. We’re not just holding them to that original contract. We’ll restructure it, right? So in a bank, that’s a troubled debt restructure. Right, they got to report those, a bunch of regulatory things around it. That’s a hard thing for them to do. They get criticized, they got too many, too much of it. It’s the right thing to do a lot of times for a customer that’s working with you and that sometimes solves them. We will do that for our customers. So sometimes it’s timing the other way, like we’re more patient than a bank will be, but it’s more towards regulatory reasons. And then at other times, we’re more aggressive than they will be. And it just, it makes a difference in how you work with your clients and in the marketplace. And it’s always a tough thing to do. 

Banks get put in a tough position when they’ve got underperforming customers, they, you know, they first look to write them down and they don’t always have the ability to work out a scenario. And so we want to be really good at it. We’re still working at it. We’re going to get better. And we want to partner with. We’ll be good at the front end and the back end. Then we really know what we’re doing when we’re setting residuals or structuring deals, know the risks, know how to get in and out of transactions, you know, and it’s state by state. 

You know, we had one in Wisconsin and the rules in Wisconsin are a little different. And so you got to learn how to do that with your legal counsel. So having the right connections in all those different states and areas makes a difference on how you pursue your strategies.

Andrew Pace
Of course. If you don’t mind, what’s your personal mission when it comes to rebuilding training and development for the next generation of equipment finance professionals? 

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, part of my reason for starting Elevix from a personal standpoint was I saw the lack of training in the banks and in the industry, right? And I love this industry. I’ve been in it my whole life. I want to see it continue to thrive and keep growing. So I want to train the next generation of equivalent finance professionals. That’s really it. So we’re, I was just talking to a lawyer this morning about doing an insurance training. We’re having some challenges with our teams and on the small ticket side about getting the insurance certificates right. And some of it’s like title vehicle type stuff, right? So you can’t fund the deal without insurance on a title vehicle. So, you know, but, you know, if they got multiple companies, whoever your lessee is or your borrower, the insurance policy’s got to be written in the name of the lessee of borrower, not some other entity, right? And, you know, you got to get the right insurance for the right deal. So there’s things to know. 

That stuff used to be more commonly known, and it’s not. And so I want to train people up the right way. I see a lot of people out there, not people, companies out there, banks included, I’m going to be writing an article about this, doing very poor transaction procedures. Like titled vehicles letting independent lessors hold the titles and not even putting them lien on the title. So you got, you’re in an unsecured position on that. Now, you know, you may have trust in that independent leasing company that they’re going to transfer it over to you when there’s a problem, but that’s a big fraud potential if they ever did that, right? It’s not a good policy. 

Or I see companies pre, they call it pre-funding. I don’t allow that here, but getting a customer to sign a DNA before the equipment is delivered and in working order at their location. Well, you’re asking for a big problem when you do that. And that creates all kinds of PIMZ violations and tax violations and all kinds of issues. It’s just, there’s a way to solve for that. If you need to fund a vendor before the equipment’s ready to be accepted, you just do an interim funding agreement of progress pay. We can do that. It’s just a different documentation path you got to go down. Don’t ask the customer to commit fraud by signing off that the equipment’s been delivered when it hasn’t been delivered. And there are big companies out there doing that type of thing just to get the deal closed so they can count the volume for the month. Those kind of businesses are going to get our industry in trouble. So yeah, I want to train the next generation to do it right. Learn how to do tax pricing, learn how to do residual analysis. Credit analysis, understand their documents. A lot of people in our industry, I see them, they don’t understand the documents. And it’s just, you know, I don’t know how they can do so well without understanding what they’re doing in terms of documentation. 

But yeah, that’s the goal here is really train everybody up, give them the opportunity to move around in different areas of our company. You know, I usually start people out in credit and then say, you know, if you want to go into asset management, you can do that. You want to go into sales, great. Capital markets, wonderful. You know, most people want to go into capital markets because that’s the funnest, right? Or they think it’s the funnest. But we have some that want to be asset managers, so that’s cool. We’ll do that. And I think that’s a great job for somebody right now because it’s going to be like one of the only guys remaining if you’re if you’ve got some time left.

Andrew Pace
Sure, yeah. And you’re touching all different facets of the business too, right? From credit to documentation to titling and things like that.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, one of my things I do with our asset managers, they love it. They’ve never been treated like this before is, you know, they’re in on all the management meetings and all the discussions and brought in on, they’re not just stuffies in the back room doing curves and residuals. They’re part of the deal team. I tell them, credit is app and asset management is app. We got to both work together and they’re at the top of the decisioning. You know, we’re not doing this if you guys don’t think it’s the right thing to do. And so, and you know, I think others wouldn’t disagree with that at other locations, but I think they don’t necessarily treat asset management as important as it should be.

In my mind, it’s just as important as credit. You got to know what you’re doing. Getting into a bad industry with the wrong structure and the wrong asset or getting into assets, the wrong residuals or, you know, too long a term or what have you is not a good thing and you create your own problems.

So learning from the guys that really understand the assets and how we’re going to get out of them if we got to get out of them is critical to how our strategy is in lending. And you know, we’re trying to structure deals the best we can and that they’re very helpful in that. So it’s kind of a fun place to work when for an asset manager that gets taken seriously like that.

Andrew Pace
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So before I let you go, we have to get to the most important topic of our conversation today. You and I both root for teams that know heartbreak all too well. The Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. So, you know, I was 13, 12, 13. So, you know, my early teenage years, I witnessed four straight Super Bowl losses versus, you know, I think decades of near misses. You guys have been to a few Super Bowls, last second losses, historic heartbreak.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yep. Three. Yep. 

Andrew Pace
So Jeffry, I’m going to put you on the spot. Which franchise do you think is more cursed? The Bills or the Bengals? And more importantly, do you actually believe either one of us will ever see a Super Bowl parade in our lifetimes? 

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah. I’m going to go the Bengals are more cursed. Probably because just, you know, this the ownership of the Bengals right now kind of creates an atmosphere. Although this offseason, they’re really trying to actually get a defense to support Burrow. But we’ll see. 

You know, they’ve had in both franchises right now have great quarterbacks and they don’t haven’t really got the personnel around them to be successful. I really thought the Bills these last couple of years were going to do it. I was rooting on them when the Bengals were already out of it after losing the first two games every year. But the Bills just, I don’t know. When it gets to playoff time, they just seem to fizzle out. I don’t know what happens. But yeah, I yeah, I liked your coach, though. I think he was good. Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t have fired him. I wish we had kept him. I don’t know who’s the new coach now. You got…

Andrew Pace
He was our offensive coordinator over the last few years. Younger, you know, he’s different, different style. McDermott was a great, great leader. You know, I think he, the team outgrew his coaching style. I think perhaps maybe his coaching style is better served with a younger, more raw, greener team versus a more seasoned veteran team, which I think the Bills had, especially the players that are in those key positions. I don’t know if his relationship with the quarterback was, you know, as good as what it appeared to be. But it was time for change. I mean, he’s been here nine years. I’m grateful for what he did for us. We had the longest playoff drought in professional sports history at 17 years. And I don’t think we would be the team we are today had it not been for him. So I’m extremely grateful for what he did and getting us back in a great spot. But nine years, not many coaches get that many chances, you know, without winning one. I mean, you’ve had coaches last year, this past year who’ve won multiple Super Bowls get fired. Harbaugh, Tomlin. 

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
That’s true. That’s true. Yeah.

Andrew Pace
You know, McDermott couldn’t even get the Bills to 1 Super Bowl. We’ve been to a few, you know, AFC championships, but we haven’t been able to get over the hump. But I think, you know, being cursed for me is almost something that is more, almost like supernatural, like wide right. You know, the Music City miracle, that 13 second debacle, which I think might really boil down to coaching, the catch, no interception, catch debate we had with the Broncos last year. I just feel like we’re snake bitten. We have, I have in my will that I wanted the Bills to be my pallbearers so they can let me down one more time. You know, we have t-shirts in Buffalo. Go ahead. We have t-shirts in Buffalo that say just one before I die because, you know, we haven’t won a professional sports championship. The Bills won an NFL championship or an AFL championship before the merger, but they don’t talk, they don’t count that really. Once, once they, once the NFL and the AFL merge, we really don’t get credited, although we had some great, great teams back in the 60s. And, but, but yeah, it’s been, it’s been heartbreak year after year. It’s like, okay, how are we going to lose this year, right? But, you know, it’s been it’s been a great been a great ride, and, like I said, we’re… 

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
I do have to say this because, you know, I’m from Southern Ohio and grew up a Bengals fan and I live in just outside of Cleveland now. I think the Browns are more cursed than both of our teams. They’re even worse. And the Jets might be even worse than the Browns, but the Browns are definitely cursed. They just, but they make a lot of dumb, dumb decisions. They really do. They have really, like you guys do, you have really good fans. Cleveland has really good fans. Cincinnati, they’re more Reds. They’re more baseball guys.

Andrew Pace
Yeah, that’s more self-inflicting, right? Yeah.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
There are diehard Bengals fans, but not as much as Buffalo or Cleveland. Cleveland really has an amazing fan base, but it’s just like, they just terrible run organization. And they may be more cursed than the both of us. Both of us are at least good every once in a while, or at least lately.

You know, we’ve had two good quarterbacks, right? And boy, these Browns fans really are mad that they passed on Josh Allen. They all wanted him and then they didn’t pick him. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Pace
Oh yeah, they took Mayfield. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about Josh. I’m not a big college football guy. Buffalo’s not a huge college football town. The closest big programs, I would say, is Syracuse, Pittsburgh, obviously, Ohio State, I mean, those are West Virginia. Those are probably the biggest. So we never really were a college football town. So we were all professionals. So I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on in college football. And then obviously the draft happens and we had just broke our playoff drought. So I think everybody was still numb. You know, we had a season where we, you know, had no expectations. And then we…

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
He definitely got better. Yeah, I mean, he was a great athlete in college. He didn’t have a really complete high completion rate. And every once in a while you see that with him now, but he got a lot better. You know, he worked at it and he got coached up and he would see, you know, because he’s a great, he’s big, right? And he can run and, you know, he has an arm, but he wasn’t always super accurate. He’s not like Burrow that was like, hardly ever misses a pass, right? But, he’s a lot tougher than Bertha, gets hurt all the time, so challenging. 

Andrew Pace
Right, right. Yeah, and that’s the size too, right? And I think Alan, knock on wood, he did have a foot injury at the end of last season, but he was able to play through it, a wrist injury, you know, before that. I think having that big frame and, you know, he’s usually the one delivering the punishing hits. He’s not getting, he’s not the one that’s getting absorbing all the hits. So I think that helps a lot. But I think it really boils down to luck. You know, I think he’s, you know, Burrow just hasn’t been, you know, he’s just been snake bitten with injuries. He’s one of the most talented, if not the most talented quarterback in football. 

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP   43:35
He’s so good and he wants to complete every pass. So what he sends everybody out, number one, and you know, coaches let him do it. So it’s partly the coach, but they don’t, you know, they only got 5 blockers. And then he holds the ball a long time because he wants to see somebody get up and by the way, he’s got like the two best wide receivers in the league and they get, they do get open and then he finds them and that’s why the completion percentage is amazing. But sometimes he waits too long and they get him and then he gets hit. And so, you know, and every once in a while he runs, he doesn’t run as much as Allen, but he’s a good runner too when he, you know, he’s selective. Allen runs about I would call him the almost, he’s not as good as Lamar, but he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. He runs when he needs to and he’s good at it and he knows, he knows how to do it. He’s just, he’s just got a good sense. Some of those guys, they run and then they get killed and that doesn’t work. But, but no, you’re good. If you’re a quarterback, no matter how big you are, like, RG3, he just got, he kept running and he just got murdered. And he’s not that big of a guy and he just destroyed. And so some of those guys, there’s no, but Alan does a good job of not, he runs the right amount and he really helps them. But Burrow, he just holds a little too long. He’s just, he’s so good at completing the passes. He wants to do it. And he’s not afraid, which is good, you know, and I think it’ll be good. It just, I think if he could just do a little bit more quick releases and let it go and keep those guys off him a little bit, it would help them. And then they need a defense, you know, they were the worst defensive league. 

Andrew Pace
Yeah, yeah, and and you’re off, and again, you talked about that too. I mean, if Allen had Chase and Higgins, we probably would have probably won three Super Bowls by now. I mean, you know, we had the offensive line, we have some good tight ends, we have a couple of really good 22A2B receivers. Up until this past year, when we traded for DJ Moore, we really didn’t have a, you know, you know, a number one wide receiver. So we’ve had like 3 twos and a couple of threes, but, you know, Burroughs got two number ones on his team, but he just didn’t have the line to protect him. Didn’t really have a strong balancing running game and your defense, right? Like you guys, I was with two of the biggest Bengal fans I know with Sean McKenna and Dave Gruber. They came up after the Bills-Bengals game last year. And we were losing, the Bills were losing by, I don’t know, 17, 18, 20 points in the third or fourth quarter. And they could, they weren’t running the ball and they were throwing it, and that’s why they ended up losing, because Burrow throws a pick six, and they just, they don’t have a lot of, they didn’t trust a run game, so they’re, you know, throwing the football, which plays right into a team that’s, you know, going to, that’s going to come, you know, try to come back. And it just was a recipe for disaster. And you know, same thing with Harbaugh. The first week of the season, the Bills were down big to the Ravens, and he was still throwing the ball and he was, you know, not being as aggressive later in the game. You know, he’s on our side of the 50 and he’s punting on 4th and 5 or 4th and 4th. And where the analytics would say, go for it. And he just got conservative. And you let a team like Buffalo who’s got a quarterback that will, you know, will the himself to a win. It’s just not a good recipe. So I like your coach. You have a great, phenomenal quarterback. You got two of the best receivers in the league. Shore up that defense and that offensive line. And who knows, we might see a Bills Bengals AFC championship game.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
All right, we might. Yeah, we may. Yeah, we’ll see. It’s now or never, you know, Burroughs going to want to get out if they don’t, if they don’t get a defense to support him. So I think they had four or five games last year that they scored 40 points and lost. I mean, that should, you shouldn’t, that should never happen. 

Andrew Pace
But, well, we’ll see. I’ll be in Cincy for that game if they happen to host and you’re welcome to come to Buffalo anytime for Bills Bengals game or if you want to experience Bills Mafia, you’re welcome to come to a game, enjoy it as a neutral fan. It’s probably better that way because you’ll leave happy no matter what. You know, so I have friends all over the country that are like, I’d love to come to a game when my team’s playing the Bills, but I’d rather come and enjoy it as a neutral fan and just enjoy the, you know, experience of tailgating and Bills Mafia. So invitations open anytime, playoffs or not.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
All right, that might be fun. I have to do it when it’s not cold. I don’t know if I can handle it if it Bills winter. That might be a little rough.

Andrew Pace   48:32
Yeah, I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. The older I get, the, you know, the less I can tolerate the cold temperatures myself.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
I like, I like, I stop in Buffalo a lot, I already did, because my daughter went to Syracuse, so we used to drive through there all the time and stop there for lunch and stuff. So yeah, spent some time there. It’s a good town.

Andrew Pace
Yeah, it’s nice that we’re emerging. We’re kind of Buffalo’s going through a resurgence. And, you know, now we’ve got our hockey team is thriving and doing well in the playoffs. So it’s great. When the springtime hits, the snow melts and we start seeing green grass and flowers start budding and starting to see leaves on trees. And playoff hockey, it’s just nothing like it in Western New York when the Sabres are in the playoffs. And, you know, it’s the weather’s breaking and it’s just people are outside and just so excited. So it’s a, although it’s going to get cold this weekend, but you would notice from, you know, how people are, their demeanors and how excited they are for playoff hockey. 

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, that’s fun. 

Andrew Pace   49:37
No, they’re kind of becoming like America’s, you know, everyone’s second favorite team, similar to the Bills. I think the Bills, Bengals, and even the Lions are like becoming everyone’s second favorite team if their team’s out, because I think everyone would love to see what those three cities would do if either of them won a Super Bowl. But thank you.

Jeffry D. Elliott, CLFP
Yeah, you get that sense. Thank you for having me.

Andrew Pace
Thank you for joining me. It’s been an honor and for sharing your perspective on where the equipment finance industry is headed and how Elevex is positioning itself for the future. To our listeners, thank you for spending time with us on the ACS portfolio perspective. If you enjoyed today’s conversations, please subscribe, share the episode and join us next time as we continue exploring how leaders like Jeffry across our industry think about strategy, risk, and sustainable growth. Until next time, thank you for listening.