Private Credit Calculator: A Scoring Tool for Live Deal Due Diligence
Co-built a private credit scoring framework used on live deals to evaluate covenants, fundamentals, and collateral for early-stage credit opportunities.
Darshan Patil
Business Analyst at Preferred Square
From their time as
Business Analyst
Preferred Square • 2024 - 2025
Overview
Darshan co-built a private credit scoring calculator at Preferred Square to address a specific problem: the volume of startups raising through private credit was growing, and the team had no systematic way to run due diligence consistently and objectively across opportunities.
The Story
Darshan co-built a private credit scoring calculator at Preferred Square to address a specific problem: the volume of startups raising through private credit was growing, and the team had no systematic way to run due diligence consistently and objectively across opportunities.
The tool was built with AI assistance and drew on industry best practices for private credit covenants. It scored each deal across multiple parameters: covenant structure appropriate to the company's stage, financial ratios and health indicators, sector and TAM growth rate, management quality, and collateral value. Each parameter fed into an overall rating that gave the team a structured first-pass view on whether to proceed.
Critically, the calculator was used on live deals, not just as a template. It gave the team a consistent baseline for evaluating opportunities and surfaced the key risk factors early in the process, allowing the client to make a more informed decision on whether to move forward.