Lending Process

Decide with hypothesis, not paperwork.

Convert the assessment into a credit recommendation the IC can defend. Hypothesis-led. Cash-flow tested. Sensitivity calibrated. The IC sees what to approve, what to amend, what to decline, with full transparency on assumptions.

In this phase

From screened deal to defensible recommendation.

Five activities. Two to four weeks of work, depending on deal complexity. The output is a credit narrative the IC can interrogate, plus an audit trail every reviewer can follow.

01

Pre-DD screening

Kill-gate logic in 10 to 20 minutes

02

Risk Hypothesis

Three to five fragilities articulated

03

Cash flow underwriting

Reconstruction, forecast, sensitivity

04

DD workplan

Information requests, field and desk

05

Credit narrative & IC

One-page story, five-slide pack

Try it

Three minutes inside the hypothesis.

The discipline that separates a credit story from a credit memo. Pick a sample deal. The system formats your fragilities into the If, Then, Mitigated by structure and scores each one.

Interactive preview

Risk Hypothesis Builder

Enter three fragilities. The system formats them into the If X then Y mitigated by Z structure. Scores against five quality criteria. Exports a draft Risk Hypothesis Canvas with cross-phase trace lines into Pre-Disbursement and Monitoring.

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Working preview · Two sample deals plus blank canvas
The toolkit

The toolkit

Five tools turn the hypothesis into a defensible recommendation. 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

Pre-DD Form and Kill-Gate Checklist

Two to four page deal positioning document with a 10-20 minute screening checklist. Decides Reject, Hold, or Proceed. Maximum risk coverage in minimum time.

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Tool 02

Risk Hypothesis Canvas

The intellectual centerpiece of origination. Articulates the three to five fragilities that could break the deal. Format: If X happens, then Y impact, mitigated by Z.

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Tool 03

Cash-Flow and Underwriting Engine

Six-line driver-based P&L. Twelve-month cash flow reconstruction. Confidence Matrix. Base, best, worst forecasts. Sensitivity breakpoints. Every number traces to a discovery question.

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Tool 04

DD Workplan and Information Request List

Excel workplan that turns the Risk Hypothesis into a sequenced field and desk plan. IRL split between borrower and third-party requests. Project-management spine of due diligence.

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Tool 05

Credit Narrative, IC Memo, IC Q&A Cheat Sheet

Six-section, one-page credit story. Five-slide IC package. One-page answer ladder for IC pressure. Backed by the IC Memo Decision Quality Rubric.

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The principle

Q-Lana on due diligence

A credit memo without a hypothesis is a description. Good due diligence names what could break the deal before the committee does, and shows what holds if it happens. When that becomes the habit, review cycles shorten, because the argument is already framed.

Christian Ruehmer, Co-Founder, Q-Lana

Why this matters

Hypothesis is the spine.

A credit memo without a hypothesis is a description. A credit memo with a hypothesis is a decision. The Risk Hypothesis Canvas forces every analyst to articulate what could break the deal and what would catch it. Every later phase, from covenant calibration to portfolio reason codes, consumes that hypothesis. The discipline is set here.

For Heads of Credit and underwriting leaders

Bring us a recent IC pack. We'll mark up the hypothesis.

Forty-five minutes. We read your most recent IC memo and tell you what the Risk Hypothesis Canvas would have caught, and what it would have asked.

Q-Lana Weekly

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

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Information becomes intelligence. Intelligence becomes advantage.