Ziyon Capital Advisory

I · Where You Are

Where are you in the credit journey?

Most businesses arrive here in one of three positions. Each has a defined starting point.

Preparing to borrow

You are considering new debt, a refinancing or an increase, and want to know how a lender will read the business before you approach one — or before you rule out approaching one at all.

Start with the free Credit Readiness Check, then the £150 Credit Snapshot →

ii.

Already have a facility

Debt is drawn, and you want to monitor covenant headroom, serviceability, performance and emerging credit risks while the facility runs.

The Audit establishes your baseline; Credit Watch then maintains it quarterly →

iii.

Been declined

A lender has said no, reduced the amount, or imposed conditions you did not expect. The reason is in the file, and it can be found.

Start with the £150 Credit Snapshot; the Audit sequences the remediation →

II · The Approach

Translation, not coaching.

Three things every founder should know before they walk into a meeting with a UK lender. Each one changes how you prepare.

i.

The decision is made before the meeting.

By the time your file reaches a credit committee, the conclusion is already substantially drawn in the memo. The room is for confirmation. The work of being funded is the work of being read.

ii.

Every document is read against every other.

Your business plan, management accounts, VAT returns, and bank statements are read as a single file. Inconsistency between any two — even small — is the single most common reason a strong business loses to a stronger file.

iii.

Anticipated questions do not get asked.

A file that pre-empts the obvious concerns — the margin dip, the related-party flow, the working capital cycle — reads as serious from page one. The committee has less to challenge. The memo is easier to write favourably.

The committee is no longer the only reader. Challenger and specialist banks now write the majority of UK SME lending — 60 per cent of gross bank lending in 2025, on British Business Bank figures — and many specialist and non-bank lenders increasingly underwrite from open banking data rather than a written memo. A model does not ask follow-up questions. Where the reader is automated, consistency across documents and bank-statement hygiene matter more, not less. It is also why every Ziyon verdict states its basis of assessment: mainstream bank standards and specialist and non-bank standards are different reads of the same file.

III · Start Here

Not sure where you stand?

Start with the free Credit Readiness Check — nine short questions, about two minutes, and an instant verdict on the same scale a credit committee uses, stated against a basis you choose. No charge, and no sign-up to see your result.

Take the free Credit Readiness Check

Nine questions · ~2 minutes · Result shown free

The Credit Snapshot

What is actually holding your file back?

Before you approach anyone for finance, see how your business is likely to be read by the person making the credit decision.

Your Credit Snapshot is a written, committee-style verdict on your file — fixed at two pages. It gives you:

A readiness verdict on the standard four-level scale, stated against the basis of assessment
The five-lens read — one plain paragraph per lens on how a credit team reads your business today
The three most material gaps in your file, ranked by impact
The one thing to fix first — named plainly
A recommended next step for your funding approach

Lender-Ready · Ready with Conditions · Not Yet Ready · Significant Remediation Required

Every verdict states its basis of assessment: mainstream bank standards, or specialist and non-bank standards, as you direct. Where no target lender type is named, mainstream bank standards apply and the Snapshot states that the default was applied.

And if you are already lender-ready, we will tell you. Plainly.

£150 · five business days

You will receive a booking confirmation and payment link by email within one business day. Review begins once payment and complete documents are received.
Commission a Credit Readiness Audit within 90 days and the £150 is credited in full against that engagement.

IV · The Credit Readiness Audit

Three tiers, scoped to where the business actually is.

Every engagement begins with a free thirty-minute discovery call — the conversation in which we work out together which tier, if any, is right for where you are. Files that cross borders are home ground: the UK–Africa corridor is a practice area we know from the inside.

Tier I

Essentials

from £500

5 business days

A focused diagnostic against the five lenses a credit committee uses. The institutional read most founders cannot get from anyone else.

Includes

Scored five-lens assessment, with the evidence behind each rating
Key ratio analysis with the numbers shown: DSCR, gearing, Net Debt to EBITDA, interest cover, current ratio, EBITDA margin
Red flags and inconsistencies identified across your document set
Preliminary view on the borrowing level your file can support
Prioritised action list, sequenced by impact, walked through on a call

For founders who have run the self-score and need an institutional read before deciding next steps.

Discuss this tier

Most engaged

Tier II

Standard

from £1,500

10 business days

The Essentials work, plus the financial translation that converts your numbers into the form the committee reads them in.

Includes

Everything in Essentials
Financial translation and normalisation adjustments
Sources-and-uses statement constructed for your ask
Committee-style memo summary of your file

For founders three-to-six months from a meaningful funding ask.

Discuss this tier

Tier III

Premium

from £3,000

15 business days

The Standard work, taken to deal-grade for the institutions you have named — built for files with real complexity to present.

Includes

Everything in Standard
Where the business operates or is funded across borders: a cross-border documentation pack covering counterparty, FX, group structure and compliance footprint
Lender-fit analysis against the institutions you have named
Committee Preparation Session: a structured challenge against the questions a lender's credit function is likely to ask, testing whether you can answer each from the file

For files with complexity to present: cross-border operations or funding, a group with more than one trading entity, facilities with more than two lenders, an existing covenant breach or waiver, or a funding ask above £1,000,000. Absent these, Standard is the right tier.

Discuss this tier

See the full Audit specification

Every deliverable, every tier, and how the engagement runs — on one page.

V · How It Works

Four steps. No surprises.

From first conversation to written assessment, the process is deliberately structured so you always know what comes next.

01

Understand

We establish where the business sits in the credit lifecycle: preparing to borrow, maintaining facilities already drawn, or recovering from a decline.

02

Read

Ziyon assesses the business the way a lender will, against a stated basis of assessment — mainstream bank standards, or specialist and non-bank standards, as you direct.

03

Act

You act on a prioritised list, sequenced by impact. Where the engagement is scoped for it, the file is built with you: Essentials diagnoses; Standard constructs.

04

Maintain

Where appropriate, Credit Watch tracks the position quarterly while facilities remain outstanding, so the file stays in the condition the Audit left it in.

VI · After the Audit

Stay lender-ready.

Know how a lender would read the business between reviews.

Available where Ziyon has established a baseline within the preceding twelve months — through a Credit Readiness Audit of any tier, or another Ziyon engagement of equivalent depth that produced a full five-lens verdict against a stated basis. Credit Watch maintains a baseline; it does not create one.

Once debt is drawn, the credit work does not stop. Performance moves, covenants tighten, debtor days drift, leverage rises, concentrations build, and the annual accounts eventually catch up with all of it — usually at the bank's review rather than yours. Credit Watch gives management the lender-side view first. Each quarter: a refreshed verdict against the basis fixed at your baseline; the six-ratio tracker against that baseline; facility utilisation, drawn against limit; the maturity profile and refinancing horizon of every facility; early-warning flags raised in writing as they arise; and one review call. Where you maintain management accounts to a consistent format and supply a budget or forecast, variance against it is tracked as well. Each year: a full re-score across the five lenses, including customer and supplier concentration. Priced by total facilities outstanding, under a separate retained agreement.

Tier I

Facilities up to £1m

£300 per month

Tier II

£1m – £5m

£600 per month

Tier III

Above £5m, or cross-border complexity

from £1,000 per month, individually quoted

Discussed at the close of every Audit.

VII · The Founder

Samuel Lotechukwu, ACA Founder

A note from Samuel

I have spent ten years inside the finance industry. Three of those, I sat in the rooms where credit decisions actually get made.

First the mini committee, where the file lives or dies on the strength of the credit memo. Then executive management, where the conversation moves from is this loan safe to does this loan fit what we are trying to do. Then, for the largest tickets, the Board Credit and Investment Committee — where the file is read by people who will never meet you, and will decide whether you are funded based on what is written on the page.

Across those years I managed a credit portfolio of more than three hundred and fifty million dollars. I read the financials. I drafted the memos. I presented to committee and carried files through to approval, the largest of them reaching the Board on memos I had written. I watched files get approved, get sent back, and get killed — sometimes for reasons that had nothing to do with the strength of the business, and everything to do with how the business had been presented.

Ziyon is what I built to translate that view back to founders. Not a broker. Not a coach. A credit analyst on your side of the desk — with the eyes of the committee.

That view is now a defined method, not a personal opinion — a five-lens credit read and a four-level verdict against a stated basis, the same framework a committee applies. The standards do not change with who is in the room.

Qualification

ACA

Sectors covered

Development finance · Trade finance · Corporate lending · Oil & gas

Portfolio managed

$350m+ · zero non-performing loans

Professional indemnity

£1m cover

Independence

No lender commissions, introductions or success fees

VIII · The Playbook

Not ready to talk? Start with the Playbook.

A twenty-one-page founder's guide to how lenders actually read your business. The institutional perspective, translated.

A Founder's Guide

The Credit Readiness Playbook

How lenders actually read your business

Edition 02 · 2026

Inside the Playbook

What I learned in three years of credit committee, written down for the founder.

The eleven-minute file. The five lenses, re-read from the committee's seat. The seven file-level red flags that end the review before the financials are read. The cross-border file. The ratios that decide the outcome. And a self-score that surfaces the gaps in your own file before a lender ever sees it.

We use your email to send you the Playbook and the occasional note when new material is published. No more than once a month. Unsubscribe at any time.

IX · Straight Answers

The questions founders actually ask

No hedging. Where the honest answer is “no”, you will find it here.

Are you a broker — do you arrange the finance?

No. Ziyon does not arrange finance, introduce or recommend lenders, negotiate terms, or take a success fee. We prepare your file to the standard a credit committee applies, so that when you approach a lender — your choice, your relationship — you walk in ready. That boundary is deliberate, and it is what keeps us on your side of the desk rather than the lender’s.

Can you guarantee my application is approved?

No — and anyone who promises it is misleading you. The lender makes the decision. What we change is whether your file gives them a reason to say yes, and where it currently hands them reasons to say no. We remove the second; the first is the business’s to make.

How is this different from what my accountant does?

Your accountant keeps your numbers accurate and compliant. We read those same numbers the way a credit analyst will — for serviceability, leverage, customer concentration, and the gaps a committee circles before it lends. Same file, a different and more adversarial lens. The two roles complement each other; they are not the same job.

Why not just approach the lender myself?

You can, and some founders should. But most SME applications fail before the meeting — on a file that was never built to be read by a credit team. We get you to the table with the committee’s questions already answered, so the conversation is about terms, not about whether the file holds up.

I have already been declined — is it too late?

No. A decline is information: the lender has told you that the file, as read, did not support the ask. What matters is diagnosing why before the next approach, because reapplying with the same file tends to produce the same answer. The Snapshot gives you the committee-style read of where the file now stands; the Audit sequences the remediation. What we do not do is tell you which lender to approach next — that decision remains yours.

How much could my business actually borrow?

Not a question we will answer from a website, and you should be wary of anyone who does — a borrowing figure offered without analysis is a guess. Within the Credit Readiness Audit, Essentials tier and above, you receive a preliminary view on the borrowing level your file can support, with the workings shown. It is a view on what the file supports, not a promise of what any lender will advance. The lender decides.

If I pay for a Snapshot and then commission an Audit, do I pay twice?

No. The £150 Snapshot is credited in full against any Audit tier commissioned within 90 days. If you go further with us, you have paid nothing extra for it — the Snapshot simply becomes the first step of the larger piece.

Do you work with businesses trading across the UK–Africa corridor?

Yes — it is a specific strength rather than an afterthought. Cross-border trade brings currency exposure, counterparty due diligence, and documentation expectations that catch many files out. Having assessed credit across these markets from inside the institutions, we know what a lender will want to see, and how to present it.

The pressures are structural, not anecdotal. The African Development Bank’s 2025 Trade Finance Report puts unmet demand for trade finance in Africa at $74–92 billion in 2024 and notes that tighter correspondent-bank risk appetite could widen it; the Asian Development Bank’s latest Global Trade Finance Gap Survey puts the global gap at $2.5 trillion. In practice, three things catch cross-border files out most often: correspondent-bank de-risking, incomplete KYC, KYB and ultimate-beneficial-owner documentation, and FX convertibility and repatriation risk. A file that answers these before they are asked reads differently.

X · Book a Discovery Call

Thirty minutes. No charge.

The call is the conversation in which we decide together whether Ziyon is the right help for you right now. Some founders come away deciding to do more of the work themselves first. That is a legitimate outcome — and the Playbook was written partly to make it possible.

Book a discovery call

Or write directly to hello@ziyoncapital.co.uk