Previously
In Parts 1 and 2, staff at Bank Seri Cendana discovered that a laminated cheat sheet on branch counters, and a blurry photo of it in a contact centre chat, were quoting rules years out of date. Nobody knew who made it. Then the contact centre team lead found the same table inside a credit officer's spreadsheet.
The story
Kumaravel's spreadsheet had been called FINAL four years ago. Then FINAL_v2. Then FINAL_v2_updated, FINAL_v3_USE_THIS, FINAL_v5 (there was no v4, and nobody asked), FINAL_v6_actual, and finally FINAL_v7_REAL.
He trusted it completely. It had nineteen tabs, three colours of highlighting and a macro he was slightly afraid of. When colleagues asked how he priced SME loans so quickly, he patted his laptop like a man patting a loyal dog.
On Tuesday morning, Melissa Tan from the contact centre called him.
"Kumar, your second tab. Where did you get that rate table?"
"From the sheet. The one on the branch counters. It is the official one, right?"
There was a pause on the line, the kind of pause that has ducks in it.
"I will send you a photo," said Melissa. "Of what we found in our group chat. Then you tell me if it is official."
Kumaravel did not have time to worry about it, because at ten o'clock Mak Cik Senah arrived.
Mak Cik Senah ran a kuih factory in Kajang that supplied half the pasar malam stalls within twenty kilometres. She wanted to finance a second steaming line. She had brought her accounts, her business registration, her son, and two tiffin carriers of kuih lapis, because, as she explained, "the numbers are in the folder, but the quality is in the tiffin".
Daniel Wong, her relationship manager, had brought enthusiasm. "Mak Cik Senah has banked with us for fifteen years," he said. "Her kuih is excellent. She is a very good person. We can push this through by Friday, right, Kumar?"
Kumaravel opened FINAL_v7_REAL. Tab two gave him a rate band. Tab eleven, his own notes, said that SME loans under a certain amount did not need a personal guarantor. Mak Cik Senah's request was under that amount. Easy.
Out of habit, and because Melissa's call was still bothering him, he opened iKB in his credit workspace. The bank had connected it to the approved credit manual, the SME financing guidelines, pricing circulars and credit committee procedures. The credit manual alone was four hundred pages long and had been described, by more than one credit officer, as "very complete, like a phone book".
He typed: What are the current guarantor requirements for an SME term loan for a manufacturing business with fifteen years of banking history?
The answer came back with citations to two sections of the credit manual and a pricing circular from the previous year. iKB had found the exact sub-clause buried in chapter nine, under a heading nobody would have searched for. The guarantor threshold had changed. Mak Cik Senah's loan now needed a personal guarantor. And the rate band in the circular was not the one on tab two.
Kumaravel read it twice. Then he opened the cited pages himself, because that was the rule in credit: you do not lend on a summary.
"Daniel," he said slowly. "We have a problem. Two problems."
Daniel leaned over. "Your spreadsheet says no guarantor."
"My spreadsheet," said Kumaravel, with great sadness, "is FINAL_v7_REAL. The credit manual is just final."
Daniel tried his own question in iKB: Show me how the committee decided similar loans last year. The answer cited the committee's procedure for exceptions but nothing from past committee papers. Those were restricted to committee members and the credit risk team. Daniel's role could not see them, and neither could Kumaravel's.
"It is hiding things," said Daniel.
"It is following the access rules," said Kumaravel. "If a relationship manager could read other customers' committee papers, compliance would hide us both."
Then came the snag. The guarantor note on tab eleven was his own. He could not remember where it came from: a training session, a colleague, the laminated sheet. It lived on his personal drive and had never been approved content, so iKB had never seen it. iKB could show him what the manual said. It could not show him where his memory had gone wrong. He would have to explain to his own head of department exactly where four years of his pricing had been coming from. He began composing that email in his head and did not enjoy it.
The serious moment arrived just after lunch.
Daniel came back from a phone call with his regional head, and his enthusiasm had sharpened into urgency. "Kumar, listen. Mak Cik Senah is a good customer. Her son is a co-director. We can treat the guarantor as a formality. Just approve it on the old terms, and we sort out the paperwork later. She has already ordered the steaming line."
Kumaravel looked at Mak Cik Senah's folder, at her careful accounts, and at the tiffin carriers on the table, now mostly empty.
He also looked at the cited section of the credit manual. It was clear. A loan that did not meet the current guarantor requirement could still be approved, but only as an exception, through the credit committee, with the reasons recorded.
"Daniel, I want this loan to happen. I think it is a good loan. But I am not going to approve it on terms that ended last year. If she does not want a personal guarantee, we take it to committee as an exception and argue for it properly. If she agrees to the guarantee, we can move fast, at the correct rate."
Daniel was quiet. Then he sighed, the sigh of a man who knows his colleague is right and that he now has to make a phone call he does not want to make.
"Fine. Committee. I will tell her. You write the paper."
Mak Cik Senah, when they explained it, took the news calmly. "Correct rate, correct paper, correct guarantor," she said. "Same as kuih. Correct steaming time, or it collapses." She offered Kumaravel the last piece of kuih lapis. He declined politely, as credit officers must. She wrapped it for the whole team instead, with a note that said "for after committee".
That evening, Kumaravel renamed his spreadsheet. It became FINAL_v8_DO_NOT_USE_SEE_iKB. He deleted tab two, then tab eleven, then sat for a while with the rest of it open, deciding which of the other seventeen tabs he could still trust.
At 6.40 pm, an email arrived from compliance, sent to every department head and copied to every credit officer. The subject line was in capital letters.
EXAMINATION NOTICE: TWO WEEKS.
Kumaravel looked at his half-dismantled spreadsheet. Then he looked at the empty tiffin carrier Mak Cik Senah had forgotten to take home.
He had a feeling it was going to be a long fortnight.
Ponder on this...
Somewhere in your bank, a FINAL_v7_REAL is waiting. Our guide shows how SME lending teams keep pricing and guarantor rules off personal spreadsheets.
Read the guide: How Banks Keep SME Lending Off Personal Spreadsheets
What this means for your lending team
- iKB is an enterprise knowledge AI and sovereign AI governance platform, a Malaysian technology company, that turns approved organisational content into governed answers with citations.
- Hybrid search, structural context, reranking and knowledge relationships help credit officers find the specific clause they need in a long credit manual.
- Every answer comes with citations, so officers can read the exact section or circular before relying on it.
- Role-based access control keeps restricted material, such as credit committee papers, visible only to permitted roles.
- iKB supports credit decisions with current approved content. Approvals, exceptions and committee decisions remain with authorised staff.
FAQ
What is iKB? iKB is an enterprise knowledge and sovereign AI governance platform, a Malaysian technology company, that turns approved organisational content into governed answers with citations.
Can iKB find a rule buried in a long credit manual? iKB uses hybrid search, structural context, reranking and knowledge relationships to retrieve relevant sections from long documents, and cites the source of each answer.
Can committee papers be kept away from some staff? Yes. iKB includes role-based access control, so each role sees only the content it is permitted to see.
Can iKB read our staff's personal spreadsheets? iKB answers from the content an organisation connects and approves. Files that are not part of the approved content are not used.
Does iKB approve loans? No. iKB helps credit staff find and check approved policy. Credit decisions remain with authorised staff and committees.
Where can I learn more? Visit Astiostech or contact the Astiostech team.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Bank Seri Cendana, its credit policies, customers and all characters are invented and do not depict any real bank, borrower or lending decision. iKB is a real product by Astiostech.
Coming up in Part 4
Compliance has two weeks before the examiners arrive. Head of compliance Puan Farah Aziz needs to show that staff answer from current policy. The audit export says one thing. A walk round the branches says something else. And someone has written the countdown on the whiteboard in increasingly dramatic handwriting.