One of the most common questions about Credicorp Flex is “how do you decide my limit?”. A second close behind: “how do I get it raised?”. Both deserve a clear answer, because the limit on a revolving facility is the single number that most affects how useful the product is to a small business. This article explains how we set the limit, what we review on the way to a possible increase, and the guardrails that mean we sometimes say no.
The opening limit
Your starting Flex limit is set from the same affordability assessment that decides a one-time loan: 90 days of business bank statements (open-banking-pulled with your consent, or PDF-uploaded), business credit reference data, and the company’s trading history. We are looking for: stable monthly trading income, predictable outgoings, a reasonable ratio between the facility we’re agreeing and the company’s normal monthly turnover, and no current insolvency flags.
For a first Flex facility, the cap on what we’ll initially agree is the lower of: our policy maximum for the tier, or roughly 30% of the company’s average monthly trading inflow. So a company doing £4,000 a month in net trading inflow would typically see a £1,200 opening limit. The 30% rule is deliberately conservative — most facilities are used for cashflow smoothing, and a limit that genuinely accommodates the wobble without becoming a long-term overdraft replacement is the right shape.
What triggers a review
We look at three triggers for a possible limit increase:
- Repayment history. Six months of clean Flex usage (drawings repaid on or before their minimum-payment dates) flags the account for an automatic review.
- Trading-inflow growth. If the open-banking-linked bank statements show sustained trading-inflow growth (greater than 15% over the prior 6 months), the affordability model recalculates a new appropriate limit.
- Customer request. You can ask for a review at any time from the portal — “Request a limit review” under the Flex panel. There’s no fee, no commitment, and a request doesn’t oblige you to take any increase we offer.
The lender-side guardrails
We don’t increase a limit just because a customer asks. The guardrails — applied consistently regardless of who asks — are:
- The new limit must still sit within ~30% of average monthly trading inflow.
- The customer must have at least 6 months of clean repayment history on the existing limit.
- The new limit must not push the company past its overall affordability ratio (Flex + any one-time Credicorp loans + the customer’s other reported business borrowing).
- If the customer carries a vulnerability flag, the request is routed to a manual reviewer who reads the full picture before a decision.
The borrower-side guardrails (you can use)
You can also CAP your own limit below what we’d offer. From the portal, “Manage Flex” lets you set a personal limit lower than the agreed facility — useful if you want a sensible self-imposed ceiling to prevent the facility being used during a stressful month for purposes that wouldn’t survive a calmer review. The personal cap is a binding limit on drawings, doesn’t affect the underlying agreement, and you can adjust it at any time.
What “responsible” means here
A Flex facility that is well-matched to your cashflow is a useful tool. A Flex facility that’s habitually drawn to the limit and barely paid down is a different shape — it’s working as a long-term overdraft, and the cost of that, even with our cap, is higher than a structured one-time loan would have been. We watch for that pattern in the data and we sometimes proactively contact a customer whose usage looks like it would suit a different product. That’s the conversation we want to be having, not the one we want to avoid.
For more on the product mechanics, see Inside Credicorp Flex: drawdowns, repayments, and the math; for the cap, Understanding the 100% cost cap; for the underlying agreement, the Revolving Credit Facility Agreement template.