There is a version of the lending business story that gets told over and over.
It usually starts with a compelling problem statement, a clever product idea, and an attractive market size. There are projections showing rapid growth, improving margins, and scale unlocking profitability. The story is neat. Logical. Convincing.
It is also incomplete.
What people rarely talk about is what it takes for a lending business to survive, not just launch.
Survival is not about disbursement volume. It is not about how fast you grow. And it is certainly not about how good your pitch deck looks. Survival is about whether your systems can withstand reality.
The Gap Between the Idea and the Business
Most lending failures do not happen because the core idea was bad. They happen because the organisation underestimated complexity.
Small mismatches accumulate:
- Pricing that does not fully reflect risk
- Credit policies that are clear on paper but inconsistently applied
- Collections treated as an afterthought
- Financial operations that lag behind growth
- Teams incentivised in ways that conflict with portfolio health
Individually, each issue feels manageable. Collectively, they can quietly destroy a business.
What nobody tells you is that lending is not one problem to solve, but a set of interdependent systems to balance.
Unit Economics Will Humble You
You can survive bad branding. You cannot survive bad unit economics.
Many lenders focus on top-line growth long before they understand the true cost of capital, acquisition, defaults, recoveries, and operations. They assume scale will fix inefficiencies without first proving that the underlying model works.
In reality, scale amplifies both strengths and weaknesses. If your economics are fragile at a small size, they will be catastrophic at a large one.
Survival requires brutal honesty about:
- How money is made
- Where it is lost
- And how long it takes to recover it
Credit Risk Is Not Just a Model
Another uncomfortable truth is that credit risk failures are rarely purely technical.
Models matter, but governance matters more. Decision discipline matters more. Incentives matter more. Culture matters more.
I have seen strong models undermined by weak overrides. I have seen good policies ignored under growth pressure. I have seen committees become rubber stamps instead of safeguards.
If your risk framework exists only in documents and not in behaviour, it will not save you.
Collections Will Expose Every Weakness
Collections is where theory meets reality.
It is where poor product design shows up. Where weak customer communication becomes expensive. Where operational gaps surface. Where ethical lapses damage brand trust.
Treating collections as a last resort function is one of the fastest ways to shorten the life of a lending business. Survival requires seeing it as part of the core strategy, not an unpleasant necessity.
Operations and Governance Are Not Optional Extras
Many early-stage lenders postpone investing in operations and governance because they feel “non-revenue-generating.” That is a mistake.
Reconciliation, reporting, audit trails, compliance, and controls are what allow a business to grow without imploding. When these foundations are weak, leadership spends all its time reacting instead of steering.
Survival depends on building boring things well.
People Will Make or Break You
Finally, lending businesses are only as good as the people making daily decisions.
Hiring for experience alone is not enough. You need judgment. You need alignment. You need incentives that reward long-term outcomes, not short-term optics.
A team that understands the full lifecycle of lending will make fewer costly mistakes than one optimised for speed alone.
The Uncomfortable Conclusion
Building a lending business that survives is not glamorous.
It requires patience. Discipline. Systems thinking. And a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths early.
The businesses that last are not always the loudest or fastest. They are the ones that understand what they are really building.
That is the work I care about. And that is the work Aakkio exists to support.
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If you are building, operating, or advising a lending business, these are not abstract ideas. They are practical decisions that show up every day in pricing, risk, operations, collections, and governance.
At Aakkio, we teach lending the way it actually works in practice. Our academy is designed for founders, operators, product leaders, risk professionals, and finance teams who want to understand the full picture, not just one function in isolation.
You can explore our courses and learning paths at Aakkio Academy, where we go deeper into the frameworks, examples, and real-world trade-offs behind the topics discussed here.
Oke Egbi
Founder & Principal Consultant, Aakkio Consulting
Senior fintech executive and lending expert with over a decade of experience building, scaling, and advising credit-led financial products across Africa.
