How to write a business plan for a bank loan
26 July 2026 · 8 min read
Most lenders want a business plan before they will look at a new or recently acquired business. And most of the plans they receive get skimmed once and set aside, because they were written for the wrong reader. A bank is not an investor. It does not share your upside. It carries your downside. A plan written for a bank has one job: show the assessor that the debt gets repaid, in good months and bad ones.
Here is how a lender-grade plan is structured, what the credit team actually reads in each section, and where template plans fall over.
What the bank reads first
Credit assessors read out of order. They go to the numbers first: the forecast, the repayment cover, the assumptions. If those hold up, they read the rest to check the story matches. If the numbers fail, nothing in your market analysis will save the plan. Write the financial case first and build the document around it.
The lender-grade business plan, section by section
| Section | What the assessor wants from it |
|---|---|
| Executive summary | The loan amount, what it buys, how it is repaid, and the cover ratio, in half a page. Answer the credit question before page two. |
| The business | What it sells, who buys it, how long it has traded, and what changes under your ownership. No history lessons. |
| Management | Who runs it day to day and why they are credible. If key staff stay on, say so. Experience gaps need a plan, not silence. |
| Market and competition | Enough to show demand is real and priced sensibly. Verifiable local numbers beat industry think-pieces. |
| Financial forecasts | A three-way forecast where the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow actually reconcile, with repayments shown line by line. |
| Assumptions register | Every growth rate, margin and cost tied to something checkable: history, a contract, a quote, or a benchmark. |
| Risks and mitigants | The three things most likely to hurt the business, named by you, each with a response. Naming risks builds trust; hiding them destroys it. |
Executive summary
- What the assessor wants from it
- The loan amount, what it buys, how it is repaid, and the cover ratio, in half a page. Answer the credit question before page two.
The business
- What the assessor wants from it
- What it sells, who buys it, how long it has traded, and what changes under your ownership. No history lessons.
Management
- What the assessor wants from it
- Who runs it day to day and why they are credible. If key staff stay on, say so. Experience gaps need a plan, not silence.
Market and competition
- What the assessor wants from it
- Enough to show demand is real and priced sensibly. Verifiable local numbers beat industry think-pieces.
Financial forecasts
- What the assessor wants from it
- A three-way forecast where the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow actually reconcile, with repayments shown line by line.
Assumptions register
- What the assessor wants from it
- Every growth rate, margin and cost tied to something checkable: history, a contract, a quote, or a benchmark.
Risks and mitigants
- What the assessor wants from it
- The three things most likely to hurt the business, named by you, each with a response. Naming risks builds trust; hiding them destroys it.
The forecast is the plan
A lender-grade plan is built on a three-way forecast. That means the profit and loss, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement are one connected model, not three separate spreadsheets. When they reconcile, an assessor can trace every dollar. When they do not, the whole document loses credibility, because if the mechanics are wrong the conclusions are too.
The forecast should show the loan repayments explicitly, month by month in year one, and prove cover at a stressed interest rate rather than the advertised one. A plan that only works at today's rate is a plan that fails the bank's internal test, and you will never see that test happen. You will just get the decline.
Where template plans fall over
- Hockey-stick revenue with no assumption behind it. Growth needs a driver the assessor can check.
- Round numbers everywhere. Real forecasts inherit messy numbers from real history.
- No owner wage, or an owner wage below what anyone would accept to do the job.
- Forecasts that ignore GST, tax, and the timing gap between invoicing and getting paid.
- Loan repayments missing from the cash flow entirely, which is the one line the lender came to see.
- Forty pages of padding. Length is not credibility. A tight twenty-page plan beats a bloated sixty-page one.
Match the plan to the lender
Different lenders weight things differently. A major bank leans on history and security. A specialist lender will read the management story and the sector metrics more closely. If you know which lender the plan is going to, the emphasis can be tuned before it goes in, which is one of the quiet advantages of preparing the plan and the finance strategy together rather than in isolation.
We build lender-grade business plans at a fixed fee of $3,500, and a business plan with a full three-way forecast for $5,200, with turnarounds published on the pricing page. The finance application itself is handled by our broking partner The Lending Lab Pty Ltd, with any referral relationship disclosed in writing.
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