How to Write a Simple Business Plan That Gets a Loan Approved
You don't need a 40-page document. Here's the one-page business plan our credit team actually likes to see.
New SME owners often imagine a loan application requires a thick, glossy business plan. In our experience, a clear one-pager will outperform a fuzzy fifty-pager every time. Lenders are not grading your prose — they are trying to answer three questions: can you run this business, will it generate enough cash, and will you pay us back?
The one-page structure
- What the business does, in one sentence.
- Who the customer is and what they pay for it.
- Monthly revenue, monthly costs and monthly profit (today, not someday).
- Why you need the loan and what you'll spend it on, line by line.
- How the loan will increase revenue or reduce cost.
- How you'll repay — the exact monthly amount and where it will come from.
- What can go wrong and how you'll handle it.
Numbers beat adjectives
'My business is doing well' is not a sentence a credit officer can work with. 'Last month I sold 240 bags of rice at ₦55,000 each' is. Bring three to six months of bank statements (your Bompai SME Current Account is perfect for this), supplier invoices, and a notebook of daily sales if that is all you have.
Show how the loan grows the business
If you are borrowing ₦1,000,000 to buy stock at a 15% bulk discount, write that. If you are borrowing ₦500,000 to buy a delivery bike that saves ₦40,000 a month in logistics, write that. A loan that produces more cash than it costs is an easy 'yes.'
Match the tenor to the use
Working capital → short tenor. Equipment → medium tenor. Property or major assets → long tenor. Mismatched tenors are a top reason for default.
Don't hide bad news
If you've missed payments in the past, say so and explain what you've changed. Credit officers can find this anyway, and honesty earns trust. Trust is what gets borderline applications across the line.
