The documents a bank really needs from you, and why

Bank document lists read like bureaucracy, and they get treated that way. The owner sends what is easy to hand, promises the rest, and then wonders why the file has not moved in six weeks. But almost every item on the list exists because a credit analyst has a question, and the document is the only answer they are allowed to accept. Seen that way the list becomes short and logical.

Three years of financial statements

The analyst is not reading how much you earned. They are reading direction and consistency. Did revenue grow while receivables grew faster? Did margin hold when the pound moved? Is there a year that breaks the pattern, and does the file explain it? One year tells them nothing. Three years tell them whether you manage the business or react to it.

The tax return

This is a credibility check and a liability check at once. The bank compares the declared position against the statements you presented, and it wants to know whether there is an open assessment or a settlement in progress, because an unquantified tax liability ranks ahead of the lender.

Bank statements from every bank, six to twelve months

The most heavily read document in the file. From it the analyst rebuilds your real cash cycle: how much arrives, how regularly, whether the facility ever rests, whether cheques have been returned, how much leaves for the shareholders. If you bank with four institutions and send statements from one, the analyst will assume the missing three are the problem.

Your I-Score report

Read your own before the bank does — not only for late payments, but for the total limits recorded against you and any related entity, and for entries that are simply wrong. Correcting an error takes weeks. Discovering it at committee costs you the application.

Management accounts for the current period

Audited statements are already historical by the time you apply. The analyst needs to see what this year looks like, and whether your internal reporting is good enough to produce that within a few days rather than a few weeks.

Aged receivables and payables listings

Two modest documents that quietly tell the whole story. The receivables ageing shows whether your reported sales convert to cash and which customers carry the business. The payables ageing shows whether you are financing yourself with supplier credit — legitimate, but it means the bank is not your only lender, and may not be your most patient one.

Inventory listing

This separates stock that moves from stock that has been sitting for two years. Inventory on a balance sheet is an asset; slow-moving inventory is a loss that has not been recognised yet, and analysts discount it heavily when they suspect it.

Contracts, purchase orders and a customer list

These turn your projections from opinion into evidence. A forecast supported by signed orders is a different document from a forecast supported by confidence.

The corporate file

Commercial register, tax card, VAT registration, articles of association with any amendments, shareholder structure, board resolution and specimen signatures. All of it answers one question: is the person signing legally able to commit the company? It carries no credit judgement at all, and an out-of-date register will still stop a file as effectively as a bad ratio.

Collateral documents

Title deeds, valuation, insurance policies, and for movable collateral, proof of ownership and assignment of the insurance. The bank is assessing what it could realistically recover, not what the asset cost you.

A written statement of purpose, with projections

Rarely requested formally, and the single most useful thing you can add. Two pages: what the money is for, how it generates the cash that repays it, over what period, and what happens if volumes come in twenty per cent lower. Writing this is also the quickest way to discover that you have asked for the wrong facility.

One practical note to close on. Send the file complete or not at all. A file that arrives in five instalments over a month gets re-read from the beginning each time, loses its place in the queue, and leaves the impression that the numbers are being assembled rather than reported.