Understand Your Safe Borrowing Limit
This tool helps you calculate how much you can safely borrow based on your actual cash flow – including how rains, market disruptions, and seasonal patterns affect your business.
1. What Type of Business Do You Run?
Choose the category that best describes your main activity.
2. How Much Do You Make?
Your average monthly or weekly income from this business.
3. What Do You Spend When You Produce?
Costs that change with how much you produce or sell.
How much do you spend on this per month? (₦)
4. What Do You Spend Regularly?
Costs you pay even if you don’t produce that month.
How much do you spend on this per month? (₦)
5. Do You Have Existing Loans?
If you’re already repaying loans, we need to know.
6. If You Borrow, What Terms?
These help us calculate your safe borrowing limit.
7. How Often Does Rain Disrupt Your Operations?
Think about the last full year. How many months were your farming, trading, or market activities seriously disrupted by rainfall, flooding, or waterlogged roads?
8. How Reliable Is Your Market Access?
Roads to rural markets often become impassable during rains. This affects whether you can sell, buy inputs, or receive payments.
9. Have You Experienced Climate Shocks in the Last 3 Years?
Climate shocks are sudden events — heavy flooding, drought, hailstorm, wildfire, pest outbreak — that seriously damaged your business. Past shocks help predict future risk.
10. Map Your Business Months
Click each month to label it as a Peak (good income), Lean (low income), or Rain-Disrupted month. Click multiple times to cycle through.
11. How Severe Is Your Lean Season?
Lenders who don’t account for lean seasons set repayment schedules that push borrowers into default. Let’s build a realistic picture.
12. When Would You Prefer to Repay?
Matching repayments to your income cycle is critical. Many rural borrowers default not because they can’t pay — but because repayments fall during lean season.
Select all months where your cash flow is strong enough to repay a loan.
13. Cash Reserves & Resilience
A cash reserve is your first defense against bad weather and missed income. Lenders (and you) should know how long you can survive without new income.
Your Safe Borrowing Analysis
Your Safe Monthly Repayment Capacity
🌧️ Climate-Adjusted Safe Loan Limit
Maximum Loan (Standard — Without Climate Adjustment)
How This Works
Monthly Revenue: If you entered a weekly figure, we multiply by 4 to get your monthly estimate — so ₦10,000/week becomes ₦40,000/month.
Net Cash Flow: This is what’s left after you pay all your production and operating costs.
Cash Flow Headroom: Your net cash flow minus existing loan repayments — your actual remaining borrowing capacity.
Safe Repayment Capacity: We apply a conservative 35% rule — only 35% of your headroom should go toward new loan repayments. This protects you if revenue dips.
Safe Loan Amount (Standard): Using your safe repayment capacity, interest rate, and loan duration, we calculate the maximum principal you can responsibly borrow.
Climate Risk Score: Combines how many months are disrupted, how severe the income drop is, and how often you’ve experienced climate shocks. Higher score = higher risk adjustment needed.
Climate-Adjusted Safe Loan Limit: We reduce the standard safe loan amount based on your climate risk score. A borrower with no climate risk gets the full amount; high climate risk can reduce the safe limit by up to 50%. This protects you from defaulting during a bad rain season.
Effective Annual Income: Your annual revenue adjusted downward for months lost to climate disruption — a more honest view of what you actually earn in a typical year.
Lean Season Income: How much you earn in your hardest months, based on your income drop percentage. Repayments must be affordable even at this level.
Resilience Score: Based on your savings depth, whether you have insurance, and whether you have community/family support. Higher resilience means you can absorb shocks without missing loan repayments.
Seasonal Repayment Guidance: If you mapped your months, we identify when you can comfortably repay and flag if your repayment window falls during a lean or disrupted period.