We say 48 hours a lot. It is the number in our headline, it is what prospective customers ask about first, and it is the thing that differentiates us most clearly from the bank LC process. But "48 hours" is a claim that either holds up under scrutiny or it does not. This piece is our attempt to explain exactly what happens during those 48 hours — what the AI does, what a human underwriter does, and where the process can slip outside that window and why.
We are writing this partly for potential applicants who want to know what to expect, and partly because we think the trade finance market in Nigeria has a chronic trust deficit around turnaround claims. Every bank's trade finance brochure says "fast approvals." Most importers who have waited 28 days for an LC would dispute that characterisation. We want to be specific enough that you can hold us accountable, not just take our word for it.
Before the 48 Hours Start: Account Registration and KYC
The 48-hour clock starts when you submit a complete application — not when you first create an account. There is a prerequisite step that needs to happen before any financing application, and it is worth understanding separately.
New applicants register on the Trade Lenda platform with their CAC registration number, BVN, and business contact details. Our KYC process runs an automated cross-reference against the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) registry to confirm that your business is validly registered in Nigeria and that the registration details match what you have submitted. BVN verification links your personal identity to the business account, consistent with CBN customer due diligence requirements.
For most applicants with a clean CAC registration and an active BVN-linked account, this KYC step completes in under 10 minutes. The system flags accounts for manual review in cases where the CAC record shows recent changes, where the BVN identity and business director record do not match, or where there are other indicators that require human verification. Manual KYC review adds time — typically 4–8 hours — but it does not count against the 48-hour application window.
The practical implication: if you are planning your first Trade Lenda application, register your account and complete KYC at least 24 hours before you intend to submit your financing application. Do not leave both steps to the same afternoon. Account registration is fast; dealing with any KYC flags is not an emergency, but it is easier to handle without time pressure.
Step One: Document Submission (T+0)
Once your account is KYC-cleared, you submit your financing application. The document submission interface is designed around the specific set of documents we need to make a credit decision. For import finance, the core set is: the commercial invoice from your overseas supplier, the bill of lading or airway bill (draft copy is acceptable at application stage for pre-arrival finance), the packing list, and your Form M reference number.
For export pre-shipment finance, the set is different: the confirmed purchase order from your overseas buyer, your NXP form reference, your NEPC export certificate, and any product-specific certifications (phytosanitary, NAFDAC, etc.) applicable to your commodity.
The submission interface does basic format and completeness checking at the point of upload. If a required field is missing from the commercial invoice — for example, if the HS code column is blank or the supplier details are incomplete — the system flags this immediately rather than letting you submit an incomplete application only to discover the problem in our review queue. This real-time completeness checking is a small thing that saves meaningful time: an incomplete application that we return for correction can add a full day to the process.
We start the 48-hour clock from the point of your completed document submission with all required fields present and all mandatory documents uploaded.
Step Two: AI Risk Assessment (T+0 to T+0:30)
As soon as a complete application is submitted, our automated risk assessment pipeline begins running. This is the step that takes 15–30 minutes in most cases, and it is doing a significant amount of work in that window.
The first module processes your NCS customs history. We query the available customs clearance data associated with your CAC registration — frequency of clearances, commodity categories, clearance times, any records of duty disputes or regulatory holds. A business with 18 months of consistent clearance history across 12 completed shipments in electronics or FMCG commodities looks very different to our model from a business with its first clearance record or one with irregular clearance patterns. We do not expect perfection — customs delays happen for reasons outside an importer's control — but pattern consistency matters.
The second module assesses shipment risk. This pulls from the invoice and shipping document data you submitted: the origin port of the goods, the shipping route, the commodity HS code, and the estimated transit time. Origin port risk assessments vary by port and by commodity category. A port known for high rates of documentation discrepancies on a specific commodity type gets a different treatment from a port with a clean record on that commodity. Transit route risk factors in typical transit times and any known route-specific complications (port congestion, transit country instability, seasonal factors).
The third module runs buyer reliability assessment. As detailed in our separate piece on buyer scoring, this pulls together whatever transaction history we have for the specific buyer, applies country risk factors for the buyer's jurisdiction, and assesses the structural terms of the specific invoice (payment terms, delivery terms, order specificity). For first-time buyers on a corridor, this module produces a confidence range rather than a point score — we flag low-confidence buyer assessments to underwriters explicitly.
The output of all three modules combines into a composite risk score with sub-scores for each dimension, a recommended advance rate, a recommended maximum tenor, and a list of any flags that require human underwriter attention. This output is not the final decision — it is the brief that the underwriter opens when they pick up your file.
Step Three: Human Underwriter Review (T+0:30 to T+4)
The AI summary lands in the underwriter queue within 30 minutes of your submission. Underwriter assignment follows a queue system — applications are reviewed in submission order unless there is a specific reason to expedite (applicants who flag a time-sensitive goods window, for example). Our target is for an underwriter to open and review each file within 4 hours of AI assessment completion during business hours.
The underwriter's job is not to re-run the AI analysis from scratch. It is to do four things: verify that the AI summary accurately reflects the submitted documents, validate the document authenticity where possible, exercise judgment on any flagged items that require human interpretation, and make the funding decision.
Document validation at this stage is targeted, not exhaustive. The underwriter checks that the commercial invoice details match the packing list and bill of lading — that commodity descriptions are consistent, that quantities align, that supplier names and addresses are consistent across documents. We check that the Form M reference number is active in the NCS system and corresponds to the transaction described. For buyer reliability, the underwriter reviews the buyer verification output and may, in some cases, request a supplementary buyer confirmation before proceeding.
The human judgment layer matters most for the AI-flagged items. When our model produces a flag — a first-time buyer with limited data, an unusual HS code pattern, a shipment origin that has recently shown elevated documentation discrepancy rates — the underwriter decides whether the flag is a genuine risk that changes the terms of the offer, a flag that is explained by information in the documents that the model did not fully weight, or a false positive that can be cleared. This judgment call is the place where our underwriting adds value beyond what the AI model alone produces.
Step Four: Offer and Disbursement (T+4 to T+48)
Once the underwriter has reviewed the file and is satisfied, a funding offer is generated: the approved facility amount (in naira), the facility fee rate, the tenor, and the repayment schedule. This offer is presented to you through the platform with a clear acceptance window.
Acceptance triggers the disbursement process. We transfer approved capital to your designated BVN-linked business account. For most Nigerian bank accounts, inter-bank transfers settle within a few hours using NIBSS (Nigeria Interbank Settlement System). Same-day disbursement to major commercial banks is our target for applications where acceptance comes in before 3pm WAT. Applications accepted late in the business day typically disburse the following morning.
The full 48 hours is the window from complete application submission to capital in your account. In practice, for straightforward applications — clean customs history, known buyer, uncomplicated commodity, complete documents on first submission — the typical elapsed time is 18–28 hours. The 48-hour figure is the upper boundary for qualifying applications, not the average.
When the 48 Hours Does Not Apply
We want to be direct about the cases where the 48-hour commitment does not hold, rather than let you discover them at the wrong moment.
Applications submitted outside business hours queue for the next business morning. If you submit at 9pm on a Friday, your AI assessment runs overnight, but the underwriter review begins Monday morning. The elapsed calendar time will exceed 48 hours; the business-hours processing time will not.
Applications where the AI model produces multiple high-severity flags require extended underwriter review. If three separate risk dimensions are flagged simultaneously — unusual buyer profile, commodity category with elevated documentation discrepancy history, and an origin port on our elevated-scrutiny list — the underwriter review is more involved and may take a full business day rather than a few hours. We will notify you of extended review with an estimated completion time.
Applications with document deficiencies — missing fields, mismatched numbers between invoice and packing list, an NXP reference that does not resolve — are paused pending your correction. The 48-hour clock pauses at the point of document deficiency notification and resumes when corrected documents are submitted. The most common deficiency is a commercial invoice that shows a gross weight that does not match the packing list. Check your documents for consistency before submission.
First-time applications always take slightly longer than subsequent ones, because the KYC verification is running for the first time and our system has no prior transaction history for your business. We build in an allowance for this — first applications should still complete within 48 hours from complete document submission, but we recommend submitting your first application with a few extra days of buffer relative to any deadline you are working against.
The Design Principle Behind the Speed
The 48-hour target is not primarily a marketing commitment. It is a design constraint we built the entire workflow around. When Adeshina started Trade Lenda, the observation driving the product was specific: the data needed to underwrite a trade accurately exists — NCS records, shipment manifests, buyer payment histories — but no one had connected it. Banks were running their LC approvals through committees with incomplete data, taking 28 days to make decisions that a model with the right data inputs could make more accurately in 30 minutes.
The 48-hour window is what becomes possible when you connect those data sources and design the process around the model output rather than around committee schedules. The human underwriter in our process is not slower than a committee — they are faster and more informed, because they open each file with a data brief rather than starting from documents cold. Speed, in this model, comes from better information preparation, not from skipping review steps.
Every improvement we make to data quality, model accuracy, and document completeness checking makes the 48-hour target easier to hit consistently — and eventually, for the right applicant profiles, makes it possible to compress further. That is the direction of travel.