A credit investigation checklist tells your loan officer exactly what to confirm on the home and business visit before a Philippine loan goes to approval: that the borrower lives at the address on file, that the business exists and trades at the size claimed, that the mobile number and references are real, and that the income on the application survives a look at the actual store, stall, or payslip. If the visit doesn’t produce evidence for each of those, it was a courtesy call, not a credit investigation.
This guide is for branch managers, credit investigators (the “CI” on most PH lending desks), and owners of small lending companies and microfinance branches who approve loans of roughly ₱5,000 to ₱100,000. It gives you the visit checklist, what to bring and file, a worked example where the visit cut the loan size, the traps that make CI reports useless, and the privacy lines your officers should not cross.
The short answer: what a CI visit must prove
Every visit should leave the file with five findings, each backed by something an approver can see without trusting the officer’s memory:
- Residence: the borrower actually lives at the declared address, and you can find the house again.
- Business or employment: the income source exists, is operating, and is roughly the size the application says.
- Income reality: a verified monthly net income figure, written next to the declared one.
- Contactability: the mobile number rings in front of the officer, and at least one reference confirms they know the borrower.
- Red flags: anything that changes the decision, written down as an observation rather than a feeling.
The approver should be able to read the CI report and decide approve, reduce, or decline without calling the officer. That is the standard.
The credit investigation checklist (print this for every visit)
Use one sheet per application. The “evidence to file” column is the part most desks skip, and it is the part that protects you when the loan goes bad six months later.
| Check | How the officer verifies it | Evidence to file | Flag if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Address matches application | Arrive unannounced or with short notice; confirm house number, street, barangay | Photo of the house front (with consent), landmark notes, simple route sketch | Borrower “just moved,” can’t show anything with the address, or the house is someone else’s |
| Borrower lives there | Ask the household; check a bill, ID, or document with the name and address | Photo or scan of a utility bill or ID page (only the fields you need) | Nobody in the house knows the borrower, or bills carry an unrelated name with no explanation |
| Length of stay | Ask, then confirm with a neighbor or barangay certificate if your policy requires one | Written answer plus who confirmed it | Less than six months at the address with no prior address on file |
| Business exists and operates | Visit during trading hours; count stock roughly, watch a few sales, ask about suppliers | Photo of the stall or store front and shelves; supplier receipts if offered | Store is closed “for today,” stock is thin, or the business belongs to a relative |
| Income claimed vs observed | Ask for a typical day’s sales and costs; for employees, see the latest payslip or payroll text | Your own estimate of monthly net income with the working shown | Observed net is far below the declared figure |
| Other loans | Ask directly about other lenders, cooperatives, and “5-6” informal loans; look for other lenders’ passbooks or cards | List of other obligations with weekly or monthly amounts | Undeclared loans surface during the visit |
| Mobile number | Call it in front of the borrower | Note: “number rang on borrower’s phone, Oct 17, 10:40 AM” | Number belongs to someone else or is switched off |
| Reference or co-maker | Call or meet at least one; ask how they know the borrower and for how long | Name, relationship, how confirmed | Reference doesn’t know the borrower well or refuses to confirm |
Two rules make this table work. First, the officer writes what they saw, not what the borrower said, in the evidence column. Second, a blank row is a flag in itself; the approver should send the file back, not assume it was fine.
What to bring, how long it takes, and what goes back to the branch
A realistic visit plan keeps officers from rushing three CIs into one afternoon and filling the rest in from memory.
| Stage | Who | What they carry or do | Typical time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before leaving | CI or loan officer | Printed application summary, blank checklist, list of documents still missing, borrower’s mobile number to test | 10 minutes |
| Residence check | CI | Confirm address, see the bill or ID, ask length of stay, photo of house front with consent | 15–20 minutes |
| Business check | CI | Visit during trading hours, watch sales, rough stock count, ask about costs and suppliers | 20–30 minutes |
| Reference call | CI | Call one reference or co-maker on the spot or the same day | 5–10 minutes |
| Write-up | CI | Finish the checklist and income estimate the same day, before the next visit blurs it | 15 minutes |
| Review | Branch manager or approver | Read the report, compare declared and verified income, decide approve, reduce, or decline | 10 minutes |
Plan on these times for a dense urban branch. On provincial routes travel time dominates, so plan visits by barangay cluster, the way you plan collections routes. If your officers are already stretched, the loan officer caseload calculator shows how CI visits eat into collection time.
Worked example: the sari-sari store that was smaller than the application
A borrower applies for ₱30,000 over 24 weeks to restock her sari-sari store in a Quezon City barangay. The application says monthly net income of ₱25,000. Your product’s pricing puts the weekly installment at ₱1,500, for a total of ₱36,000 repaid.
Your credit policy says the weekly installment should not exceed 30% of verified weekly net income.
On the visit, the CI finds the store open and stocked, but the shelves are about half what a ₱25,000-a-month store would need. Over 30 minutes the CI watches steady small sales, and the borrower, asked to walk through a normal day, describes sales and supplier costs that add up to about ₱16,000 net a month. She also mentions a weekly payment to a cooperative that wasn’t on the form.
| Item | Declared on application | Verified on visit |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly net income | ₱25,000 | ₱16,000 |
| Weekly net income (× 12 ÷ 52) | ₱5,769 | ₱3,692 |
| Maximum weekly installment at 30% | ₱1,731 | ₱1,108 |
| Requested installment (₱30,000, 24 weeks) | ₱1,500, passes | ₱1,500, fails |
| Resized: ₱20,000 over 24 weeks, same pricing | n/a | ₱1,000, passes |
The decision is not “decline.” It is “reduce to ₱20,000, record the cooperative loan as an existing obligation, and reconsider a larger amount at renewal if the pay history is clean.” Without the visit, the branch would have approved an installment that eats about 41% of her real weekly income (₱1,500 ÷ ₱3,692), before the cooperative payment. That is a week-six arrears case waiting to happen.
If you net out the cooperative payment before applying the 30% rule, the cap drops further, so write your policy down once and make every officer use the same method. The amortization preview before disbursement guide covers showing the borrower the resized schedule before they sign.
Approve, reduce, or decline: a simple decision frame
| CI finding | Usual decision | What goes on file |
|---|---|---|
| All five findings confirmed, verified income supports the installment | Approve as requested | Completed checklist, photos, income estimate |
| Residence and business confirmed, verified income lower than declared | Reduce amount or extend tenure within policy | Both income figures and the resizing math |
| Undeclared loans found | Reduce, or hold until the borrower lists all obligations | List of other obligations and the borrower’s explanation |
| Borrower doesn’t live at the address, or the business doesn’t exist | Decline | Decline reason code and the observation behind it |
| Mobile number or reference fails | Hold until fixed; decline if it can’t be fixed | What was tried and when |
Use consistent wording for declines so you can report on them later; the loan decline reason codes guide has a ready set.
Privacy lines your CI officers shouldn’t cross
A home visit collects a lot of personal information quickly, and the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173) applies to all of it. Section 11 says personal information must be collected for specified and legitimate purposes and must be “adequate and not excessive” for those purposes. Section 16 gives the borrower the right to be told what is collected and why. In practice, on a CI visit that means:
- Tell the borrower what you’re checking and why before taking photos, and ask before photographing the house or store.
- Photograph the house front and the business, not the people. Skip children, bedrooms, and anything not needed for the credit decision.
- Ask neighbors only whether the borrower lives there and for how long. Don’t mention the loan, the amount, or any arrears. A neighbor check is an address check, not a reference check.
- Scan only the fields you need from a bill or ID. Don’t keep extra pages of a payslip or bank record “just in case.”
- Keep CI photos on the loan file, not in the officer’s personal phone gallery or group chats. Upload them, then delete them from the device.
Record the borrower’s consent the same way every time; the borrower consent log guide shows a format. For the full text and the regulator’s guidance, see the National Privacy Commission. This section is general information, not legal advice; check your own privacy notice with counsel.
Seven traps that make CI reports worthless
- Scheduled visits only. If the borrower always knows the exact time, you see a staged house and a borrowed stock display. Give short notice or none, within your policy.
- Visiting the store when it’s closed. You can’t verify income from a shuttered stall. Go during trading hours.
- Copying the declared income into the “verified” box. If both numbers are always identical, your CI isn’t verifying anything. Approvers should treat matching figures with suspicion.
- The loan officer investigating their own applicant. The officer who earns on the release has a reason to see what they want to see. Where staff allow, have a different person do the CI, or at least have the manager review photos.
- Writing it up days later. Three visits from Tuesday written on Friday become one blurred visit. Same-day write-up, every time.
- Photos with no context. A picture of a gate proves nothing unless the note says whose gate, which street, and what it shows.
- Re-using an old CI for a renewal. A store that was healthy last year may have closed. Re-check residence and business at each renewal, even if lighter than the first visit. The renewal gating rules guide covers when a lighter check is enough.
Who needs a full CI visit, and who can skip it
Do a full visit for every first-time borrower, any business loan, any loan above your branch’s small-ticket threshold, and any renewal where the amount goes up.
A lighter check may be enough for a repeat borrower with a clean pay history renewing at the same or a lower amount, at the same address and business. Even then, call the mobile number and confirm the address hasn’t changed.
Salary loans through an employer arrangement lean on payroll records rather than a store visit, but you still confirm residence and contactability.
Lending companies in the Philippines operate under the Lending Company Regulation Act of 2007 (RA 9474) and SEC rules. Your own credit policy decides the thresholds above; write them down so every branch applies the same ones.
Where PesoLend fits today
PesoLend doesn’t do the visit for you, and it isn’t a field app. It gives the visit somewhere organized to land so the approver sees the same evidence the CI saw:
- The borrower profile holds address, city, occupation, employer, and monthly income, and a KYC status of pending, verified, or rejected that the branch can set after the CI is reviewed.
- The officer uploads the completed checklist scan and visit photos to the borrower’s files, tagged as ID, KYC, or Other, from a browser back at the branch. See the loan file document vault guide for a naming convention.
- Notes on the borrower and on the loan record the CI’s findings, the verified income figure, and the resizing decision. Borrower notes show the author and date; loan notes show the author, so start each one with the visit date.
- The loan stays pending until it is approved, and branch maker-checker on disbursement means the person who released it isn’t the only one who looked.
To be clear about what it doesn’t do: PesoLend has no offline field capture, no GPS tagging of visit photos, no automatic income scoring, and no credit bureau lookup. The CI’s judgment and your written policy do that work.
FAQs
Is a credit investigation checklist the same as a KYC checklist?
No. KYC confirms who the borrower is, using IDs and basic details collected at application. The CI visit confirms whether their living situation, business, and income support the loan they asked for. You need both; the KYC field checklist covers the first part.
Should the CI visit be unannounced?
Short notice is the usual compromise: enough that someone is home, not so much that the store gets restocked for the day. Follow your written policy and apply it the same way to every applicant.
What if the borrower refuses photos?
Respect it and write down that photos were declined. Describe what you saw in more detail instead. A refusal is not a decline reason on its own, but your approver may weigh it alongside the other findings.
Do we need a separate CI for the co-maker?
For larger loans, at least confirm the co-maker’s address and contact details and that they understand what they are signing. The guarantor contact recheck guide covers doing this just before release.
What to do next
Print the checklist table above, add your own income rule and loan thresholds, and use it on the next five visits. Compare declared and verified income on each one; if they always match, retrain before you scale. When you’re ready to keep CI evidence, notes, and approvals on one borrower record, log in to PesoLend.