What the committee reads, and what goes back.

The artifact

Panels to work in, one document to argue from.

An officer works the file in panels. The same analysis renders as a memo, from the opening summary to the recommendation the committee argues over, and folds into the five Cs for committees that reason in them.

Panels and memo are two views of one analysis, so there is nothing to keep in step: the panels are where the work is done, and the memo is what leaves the officer's desk.

The memo exports in the form each reader needs: the committee packet, the officer's file copy and a partner's copy are rarely the same document. A committee whose own paper is shaped differently exports the memo and carries its sections across. The panels are fixed; the memo adapts.

• The two careers that shaped it

Provenance

Every figure says where it came from.

Each figure is read from a named document, derived from stated inputs, or declared an assumption. There is no fourth category.

A sentence that cannot say what it rests on does not go on the page. A committee member can put a finger on any line and find the source printed beside it, not reconstructed afterwards by the officer who wrote it.

What the appraisal rests on is bounded by what could be read.

• How a file is read

Confidence

A number about the analysis, never about the borrower.

The appraisal carries one figure about its own work: a confidence figure.

It measures how complete the evidence packet is and nothing else. The same packet gives the same figure for any institution on any day.

It shows how much of the analysis stands on evidence and how much on gaps. It is no view of the borrower or the facility, and it does not move with the conclusion.

The limits on what is returned about a borrower are listed on the boundaries page.

Risk

What the file puts at risk, and under whose definition.

Two officers computing the same coverage ratio for the same borrower can reach different numbers: one included an obligation the other did not, started from a different line, or looked back over a different period. Both worked to a definition; the file never said which governs.

The definition is therefore settled inside the document. Where the agreement defines the terms, that definition governs and is cited. Where it does not, the ratio is computed and labelled an assumption. Covenant thresholds follow the same provenance rule.

One case produces no number: an existing facility is in the file and no scope is declared for the denominator. The two readings differ materially, and a guess would be a confident wrong answer. A missing number gets chased; a wrong one gets approved.

Counterparties are screened against the published sanctions and politically exposed person lists, refreshed on a registered schedule. An officer settles any hit; LitFin Intelligence draws no conclusion from it.

The climate overlay

A green appraisal is an ordinary appraisal with a layer on it.

The same evidence is read and the same question asked, whether the borrower can and will repay, with four additions: an eligibility screen, an environmental and social safeguards screen, the additionality case and the impact plan.

The depth is held in English and Swahili and grounded in published criteria. The investment criteria that international climate funds publish are worked one at a time: impact potential, paradigm shift potential, sustainable development potential, the needs of the recipient, country ownership including the national designated authority's no objection, and efficiency and effectiveness. Alongside them sit the environmental and social performance standards behind safeguards regimes, climate rationale and additionality, and the published principles and taxonomy for green loans.

This is knowledge of published criteria. LitFin Intelligence has no relationship with the bodies that publish them.

• What we do not claim

The loop

Three things an officer can do with a file that is not finished.

Each move is recorded before it is sent, so a question can be late but never lost.

The officer sees the state of each message.

For a message not yet sent, the officer is told whether the next step is theirs or is being handled.

The outcome

The outcome goes back to whoever sent the file.

For a file that arrived from a lender's origination path over a signed handoff, the institution's decision returns to the sender as one of five outcomes: approved, approved with conditions, declined, withdrawn, or referred to committee. The set is closed on purpose, because an outcome vocabulary anyone can extend cannot be reported on.

If the sending system has nowhere configured to receive it, the outcome is held and shown as waiting, not dropped; it is delivered when a destination exists.

The record reconciles four ways at once: still open, closed, returned, and recorded here but never delivered back. The fourth is the one no other view shows.

The decision itself stays with the institution.