Most transactions are not declined because they are unsound. They are declined because the file leaves the credit committee with unanswered questions, and an unanswered question is a reason to say no. A bankable file removes those questions in advance.
What a credit committee is looking for
A lender is underwriting one thing: the likelihood of being repaid, on time, from a source it can see. Everything in the file should serve that question.
- A repayment story, not a forecast. Show the specific cash flows that retire the facility: which receivables, from which buyers, on what terms. A general projection of growth is not a repayment source.
- Numbers that reconcile. Bank statements, management accounts and the figures in the request should agree. When they do not, the lender stops reading the plan and starts auditing the applicant.
- Named counterparties. Who the business buys from and sells to, and how concentrated those relationships are. A single buyer at 70 percent of revenue is a risk to address, not to bury.
- Security that matches the exposure. Stock, receivables, a parent guarantee or a cash margin, mapped to the size and tenor of the line.
- A clear use of funds. What the money does, and why that use generates the cash that repays it.
Naming the risk before the lender does
The strongest files raise their own weaknesses. A concentrated buyer book, a thin equity base, a sector exposed to a single commodity price: naming these and showing how they are managed builds more confidence than a file that pretends they are absent. Credit officers read for a living. They will find the risk either way, and a file that surfaces it first is the one that earns trust.
The arranger’s job
Packaging a file is translation, not decoration. It means rendering a real business in the terms a credit committee uses, anticipating the questions, and arriving with the answers. Done well, it is often what separates a transaction that is sound from one that actually funds.