Most bad debt starts with a limit set by feel
Most of the bad debt I was asked to collect over twenty years started the same way: a limit set by feel. The right answer was in the records all along.
Alex Ndubai, Chief Executive Officer, VALR Capital. 30 September 2026.
I spent twenty years on the recovery side of credit in Kenya. Most of the bad debt I was asked to collect started the same way: a limit set by feel.
A retailer asks a supplier for KES 1,000,000 on 60 days. The rep knows them, the order is big, and the answer is yes. Nobody checks what the shop really sells, because the records sit in three places: orders in one system, payments across cash, M-Pesa and the bank, and credit in the ledger.
The right answer was there all along. On its own record, that retailer could carry KES 500,000 for 30 days, and more after three cycles of paying on time. The supplier still makes the sale. It just avoids an exposure the numbers could not support.
That is the question every lender has to answer, and the one VALR Capital was built for: who should get credit, how much, for how long and on what terms. We take the records a business already keeps and answer it for each customer, always inside the business's own credit policy.
We do not lend. The business gives the credit, or a licensed lender does. Our job is getting the decision right.
If you give credit to small businesses, whether as a lender, a supplier or a platform, we will review your credit book for free.
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