These loans are a type of financing in which the Committee analyses limited selected factors about you and your business and decides if you are eligible for the loan facility. Your credit worthiness is key to deciding the pre-approval of your loan application, and the final approval is subject to the satisfactory outcome of your KYC and Customer Due Diligence procedure (CDD) . In short, the Committee deems your financial history and profile to be strong enough to justify taking a risk and loaning you the money.

Creditworthiness is basically determining the likeliness that you will default on your debt obligations, or how worthy you are to receive new credit based on credit profile, which includes your past and potential future earnings, your business account conduct and your Credit Information System (CIS) outcome. Your creditworthiness is what creditors look at before they approve or reject any new credit to you. The facility is secured, with collaterals as specified in the loan Agreement. In general, the granting of credit depends on the confidence the Committee has in the applicant's credit worthiness based on a credit scoring system.

The credit criteria for this facility is, therefore, simply an assessment of the following four factors and an applicant must meet the required scores for approval or provisional approval, otherwise, the application will be rejected. Applicants are encouraged to review these criteria and formulate an initial assessment of their credit worthiness.

We will use the applicants’ credit reports from the Credit Information System (CIS) owned and operated by the Central Bank to establish the debt level and debt management of the business. Furthermore, the Committee will also be provided with information from the Development Bank of Seychelles (DBS) from the previous Small Business Finance Agency (SBFA) Fund, SBSF Scheme, Covid Relief Schemes and other loans in the books of DBS.

The Committee will review the applicants’ generation of revenue and the trend prior to December 2023. The cash flow forecast will also show the applicant’s future trends going forward.

Bank account conduct for the last 12 months will be assessed by the committee so as to establish how well the business demonstrates the discipline of using its bank account (and personal accounts for those who have still been using their personal accounts) for its operations and to support the cash flow requirements of the business.

The committee will establish how well the need of the loan is aligned to the purpose of the Fund.

Most banks use a similar set of criteria to estimate the creditworthiness of the borrower but those for this scheme have been simplified.

The Loan Pre-Approval stage undertaken by the Committee provides DBS with an indication if the loan is ‘eligible for approval’ or is rejected outright’. The approved ones are forwarded to DBS for further processing.

The provisional approval will be re-visited by the Committee to see if the score is close enough to the approval score threshold to warrant an approval. The criteria with lower scores will be re-assessed to see if it can be waived based on impact. If it is approved this time round, it will also be forwarded to DBS team for their due diligence, and subsequent, loan disbursement if all is in order.