BANKABLE

Your banker already has a lending playbook. Now you have the borrower's version.

Why do profitable businesses still get declined for bank finance?

Because a bank is not simply deciding whether your business is good. It is deciding whether your proposal can survive credit analysis, risk grading, cash-flow stress testing, collateral assessment and approval.

BANKABLE reverse-engineers the bank's credit process for the borrower.

Most books about bank lending are written for the lender. BANKABLE is written for the business owner on the other side of the table-where far more may be at stake.

Written by banker Tekele Samanyi, drawing on more than two decades of experience in banking and finance, BANKABLE explains how lenders think, how credit decisions are made, and how to build a financing proposal that can survive the room you may never enter.

This is not another book telling you to "write a good business plan." It shows you how to think like the people who will analyse, challenge, structure and approve-or decline-the financing.

Inside, you will learn how to:

• Understand the real reasons banks decline good businesses
• See your company through the lender's credit framework
• Calculate and improve debt-service capacity
• Prepare financial statements and forecasts a lender can trust
• Size working-capital requirements instead of guessing
• Match the right financing product to the right need
• Build a lender-ready data room and financing proposal
• Prepare for credit committees and risk review
• Understand collateral, guarantees and alternative security
• Compare the true cost of financing offers
• Read term sheets and negotiate pricing, covenants and collateral
• Structure working-capital, trade and project finance
• Manage the banking relationship after approval
• Recognise financial stress early and engage the bank before crisis

More than a guide, BANKABLE is designed as a working reference.

It includes a 40-check Bankability Scorecard, borrower checklists, worked cases, financial models, negotiation tools and the Bankable Submission Blueprint-a framework for assembling a financing request the way a lender needs to see it.

The appendices go deeper into how banks create credit and what limits them, facility structuring and credit-risk mitigants, project finance, and working-capital mathematics.

A global approach to a universal problem

A credit committee in Nairobi, Frankfurt, São Paulo, Dubai, Mumbai or Toronto may use different products and laws, but the central questions remain similar:

Can you repay? Who are you? What happens if things go wrong?

Who is BANKABLE for?

Business owners seeking bank finance; entrepreneurs who have been declined; growing SMEs negotiating larger facilities; CFOs, finance managers and accountants preparing borrowing proposals; and corporate and commercial banking customers seeking a better-informed position.

It is also a practical reference for relationship managers, accountants, consultants, business advisers, MBA and credit-finance programmes, chambers of commerce, SME agencies, development institutions and banks supporting business customers.

Whether you are applying for your first business loan, refinancing, funding expansion or preparing a major credit proposal, BANKABLE helps you understand the other side of the table.

Your banker has a credit playbook. BANKABLE gives you the borrower's version.

Stop asking the bank to believe your story. Build the evidence that allows the bank to approve it.