For lenders & underwriters: Read the file, not just the score.
Cash flow underwriting starts with the statements themselves. Parse an applicant's PDFs, then run a risk review across them: evidence integrity, daily liquidity, income quality, existing obligations, failed payments, laundering patterns, and behaviour, each finding tied to the transactions behind it. Bankflow orders what to read. The decision stays with you.
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- Seven rule families
- Findings open onto transactions
- No approve or decline
Risk review
4 statements · Checking ••4521
Jan 2 to Apr 30 · all 4 verified
Sorting aid, not a decision
Findings that matter
Month-end balance far exceeds the month's average in 2 months
LiquidityExisting commitments take 41% of income
ObligationsOverdrawn on 6 of 118 days
Liquidity
Evidence
Nothing flagged
Liquidity
2 findings
Inflow
Nothing flagged
Obligations
1 finding
Distress
Nothing flagged
Laundering
Nothing flagged
Behaviour
Nothing flagged
Statements hide the answer in the order they are printed.
An underwriter reading three months of statements is looking for a handful of rows: the returned direct debit, the salary that stopped in week nine, the balance that was topped up the day before the statement closed. Printed in date order, those rows sit among hundreds of ordinary ones, and a file read at the end of a long day is a file read by skimming. The work is not reading faster. It is having the rows that change the picture pulled out first, with the evidence beside them, so the time goes on judgement rather than search.
How it works
From an applicant's PDFs to a report worth reading
- 01
Parse the statements, and check they hold together
Each statement is read into transactions and its printed opening and closing balances are reconciled against the rows. A statement that does not verify is marked before any figure built on it is trusted.
Every statement carries a status, so one that still wants a human eye is visible in the library. - 02
Select the statements and run the review
Tick the statements that belong to the application and run a risk analysis on them. It runs on that click and at no other time: never on import, never in the background.
- 03
Start with evidence integrity
Gaps between statement periods, overlaps, the same statement included twice, a period that does not meet the one before, statements in more than one currency. Everything else in the report is only as reliable as this section, so it comes first.
- 04
Read the findings that matter, worst first
Findings are promoted out of their families and ordered by severity: overdrawn days, month-end balances far above the month's average, commitments as a share of income, returned payments, one payer supplying most of the inflow. Each opens onto the transactions it was drawn from.
- 05
Decide, with the reasoning on the page
The report closes with a written summary produced after the findings are fixed, so it cannot change them. The score is a small meter captioned as a sorting aid. There is no approve, refer, or decline anywhere in the feature.
The method
Underwriting on cash flow, statement by statement
Cash flow underwriting reads what an account actually did rather than what a score says about it, which is why it is used for thin-file, self-employed, and small-business applicants whose bureau record says little. The statements carry the evidence; this is the order that gets it out of them.
- 1
Collect a period long enough to show a cycle
Three months is the common floor and six months shows seasonality, quarterly tax, and an annual insurance debit that three would hide. Take consecutive statements from every account the applicant trades through, not only the one with the healthiest balance.
- 2
Prove the evidence before you read it
Check each statement's rows against its own printed opening and closing balances, and check that the periods join without gaps, overlaps, or a duplicate month. Every ratio further down is built on this, so a file that fails here is a file to go back to the applicant about.
- 3
Read the balance daily, not on statement dates
Average daily balance, the lowest balance in each month, and the number of days overdrawn say more about capacity than a closing figure does. A month-end balance far above the month's own average usually means money arrived to make the statement look right.
- 4
Separate durable income from one-off credits
Find income structurally: the same payer, a steady amount, a regular day. Then ask how concentrated it is, whether it stopped or stepped down during the period, and how much of the inflow is transfers between the applicant's own accounts rather than revenue.
- 5
Total what is already committed
Recurring debits by payee, amount, and day give the monthly commitment, including loan-shaped payments the applicant did not declare. Compare that with durable income for a debt service figure, and check for new commitments taken on during the period.
- 6
Count the distress signals
Returned payments, a return followed by a bank charge, commitments that simply stopped being paid, and failures spread across several months rather than one bad week. These are the rows that most often change a decision, and they are the easiest to miss in date order.
- 7
Write down what you saw, with the rows attached
A finding a colleague or a regulator cannot open and check is not evidence. Export the transactions behind each point, or keep the report that links to them, alongside the decision.
Bankflow performs the first six steps and orders the findings by severity. It does not approve, refer, or decline, and its score is a sorting aid, not an outcome. See the risk analysis guide in the docs for exactly what each family checks.
What the review looks for
Evidence integrity
Whether the statements can be relied on at all: verification against printed balances, missing days, overlaps, duplicates, and currencies.
Daily liquidity
What the account held day by day rather than on statement dates, including runs of overdrawn days and month-end balances out of line with the month.
Existing obligations
Recurring commitments found structurally, by payee, amount, and day, then compared with income, including lender-shaped payments and new ones.
Repayment distress
Returned payments, returns followed by a bank charge, commitments that stopped being paid, and failures spread across several months.
Laundering typologies
Money passing straight through, round trips, deposits piling just under a round ceiling, one-time payers, and dormant accounts waking up.
Evidence behind every finding
Each finding carries the transactions it was built from. Nothing is asserted that a reader cannot open and check against the statement.
The seven families, and what each one asks
Wording from the report itself. A family with too little data to assess is left out of the score rather than counted against the applicant.
| Family | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Evidence | Can these statements be relied on? |
| Liquidity | What did the account actually hold, day by day? |
| Inflow | Where does the money come from, and will it keep coming? |
| Obligations | What is already committed each month? |
| Distress | Have payments already failed? |
| Laundering | Does money move through rather than get earned? |
| Behaviour | How is the account used, within what a lender underwrites against? |
FAQ
Common questions
Does Bankflow make the lending decision?
No. The review orders findings by how urgently they should be read and shows the evidence for each. There is no approve, refer, or decline in the product, and the score is presented as a sorting aid rather than an outcome.
Can it tell whether a statement has been forged?
Not on its own, and it does not claim to. It checks whether each statement's rows reconcile to its printed balances and whether the periods join up. A PDF's own metadata is shown only as low-weight context, because it is easy to rewrite and would otherwise rank a careful forger above an honest applicant.
How does it find salary and loan repayments?
Structurally: the same payer or payee, a steady amount, on a regular day. That works for banks whose narrations never say 'salary', and it is how income that stopped partway through the period is noticed.
Does it work outside the US?
The rules are written without country-specific thresholds, and statements in any currency can be read. When a review spans several currencies, money figures are withheld rather than converted at a rate the tool picked, and ratios and counts are still reported.
Is the review run automatically on every upload?
No. It runs only when someone selects statements and asks for it, on exactly the statements selected.
What is cash flow underwriting?
Underwriting on what an account actually did, rather than only on a bureau score: money in and how durable it is, the balance held day by day, what is already committed each month, and whether payments have been failing. It is used where the bureau file is thin or misleading, most often for self-employed applicants, small businesses, and newer borrowers, and it is usually run alongside a score rather than instead of one.
How many months of statements should we ask for?
Three months is the common floor; six shows seasonality, quarterly tax, and the annual debits a three-month window hides. Ask for every account the applicant trades through, since obligations and returned payments have a habit of sitting in the account that was not sent.
Can we get the data into our own scorecard or loan origination system?
Yes. The parsed transactions export as CSV, Excel, or JSON, and the same data is available over the REST API, so a statement uploaded by an analyst and one posted by your system come back in the same shape. Findings stay in Bankflow; the numbers underneath them are yours to take.
How do we evaluate it?
Open a free account with 50 page credits, parse a set of statements you already have a view on, and run a review to compare its findings with your own reading.
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