Lending Process

Know the customer as a system.

Understand how the SME actually operates. Map its position in the value chain. Capture character, competence, and cash flow, even when audited statements don't exist. Q-Lana guides the assessment where the data ends.

In this phase

From a first visit to a credit-graded profile.

Five steps. About four hours of work, spread over the days the relationship matures. The output is a Risk Profile Canvas the credit team can defend and the borrower can recognise.

01

Discovery conversation

Structured visit with the borrower

02

Business model & value chain

Map products, payments, where margin sits

03

Risk profile capture

Character, capacity, cash flow, collateral

04

Document & visit memo

Evidence captured for the credit file

05

Preliminary risk map

Three to five risks for the credit team

Try it

Three minutes inside the method.

A discovery script is faster to understand by filling one out than by sitting through thirty minutes of slides. Step through the flow with a sample borrower and watch the answers become a Risk Profile Canvas.

Interactive preview

Build the SME Picture

Click through the Discovery Script. Drop answers into the Business Model canvas. The system suggests a value-chain position. Output is a draft Risk Profile Canvas and Visit Memo. Five minutes from question to artifact.

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Working preview · Click to try the seven-step discovery flow
The toolkit

The toolkit

Beyond the discovery script, four more tools sharpen the assessment. Each is built from decades of advisory work in markets where audited statements are scarce. We help you pick the ones that fit your process.

Tool 01

Discovery Script and Relationship Discovery Checklist

Structured guide that turns a borrower visit into trust-based qualitative intelligence. Distinguishes signal from noise. Designed for analysts who walk into a workshop, not a boardroom.

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Tool 02

SME Business Model Worksheet

Simplified canvas that decodes how an SME earns, spends, and manages cash. Built for businesses without audited statements. Reads in fifteen minutes, drafts in forty-five.

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Tool 03

Value Chain Mapping Template and Excel Tool

Maps the SME's position in its sector. Flags where risk and margin sit. The Excel version becomes part of the credit file.

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Tool 04

Risk Profile Canvas

One-page snapshot organized around character, capacity, cash flow, collateral. The structured output of assessment that becomes the input to underwriting.

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Tool 05

Document Checklist, Visit Memo, Preliminary Risk Map

Trio that converts the visit into institutional memory. What evidence exists. What its quality is. Which three to five risks actually matter.

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From the field

Practitioners on assessment

A visit tells you the borrower is busy. An assessment tells you whether the business can carry the loan. The discovery script forced the questions I used to skip, and the canvas turned them into something the credit committee could actually read.

Relationship Manager, SME banking, East African commercial bank

Why this matters

The first steps lay the foundation.

Every later phase consumes the assessment. A weak Risk Profile Canvas weakens due diligence. Weak due diligence weakens covenant calibration. The first phase of building a relationship with the borrower carries the entire lifecycle. Q-Lana makes sure that this phase is structured, not improvised.

For analysts and Heads of Credit running first-visit assessments

Walk us through your current discovery process.

Thirty minutes. We compare what your team captures today against what the Risk Profile Canvas would capture, and tell you the gap.

Q-Lana Weekly

One newsletter. Five lenses. In your inbox every week.

Curated news with practitioner commentary. One Deep Dive in rotation. One applied tool. Read in fifteen minutes. Used the same week.

Q-Lana. The Operating System for SME and Corporate Finance.
Information becomes intelligence. Intelligence becomes advantage.