Running an affordability assessment

What the assessment captures

The assessment weighs the borrower's income against their existing obligations and the instalment the proposed loan would add. Because the check sits inside the application, it reads the requested amount, tenor and repayment schedule already entered — so it is testing the actual obligation the borrower would take on, not a rounded estimate.

• Declared and evidenced income for the borrower.
• Existing debt service — including any live Ustawi loans already on the borrower's record.
• The new instalment implied by the requested amount, tenor and repayment method.
• The resulting headroom, which is what determines whether the loan is serviceable.

How the result gates approval

The outcome of the assessment is attached to the application and carried into the approval ladder. A committee or branch approver is therefore never deciding blind: they see whether affordability passed, and a missing or stale assessment is one of the standard holds that keeps a loan sitting at review. This is the point of running it as a workflow step — the evidence that a check happened before the decision was made is preserved on the case itself.

1. 1
   Open the assessment on the application

   From the loan being originated, run the affordability check so it is scored against the amount currently requested.
2. 2
   Enter income and obligations

   Capture the borrower's income and existing commitments; their current Ustawi exposure is already in view so you are not double-counting or under-counting.
3. 3
   Record the result

   The pass/fail outcome and its headroom are saved against the application and become part of what the approver reviews.