# NYK Advisory

> Specialist credit risk and decisioning practice for banks, digital banks and finance companies across the GCC (Dubai & Riyadh). NYK Advisory works on the three places a retail lending book makes or loses money — who you acquire, who you approve, and what you do with the customers you already have — and on the two disciplines beneath them: decision economics (NPV decisioning, risk-based pricing, test-and-learn) and decisioning infrastructure.

Consumer credit: cards, personal finance, BNPL. Conventional and Shariah-compliant. Founded by Prateek Alawadi (previously Capital One, Booz & Company and Emirates NBD Group). The firm publishes a four-paper series on how consumer lending decisions should be made in the Gulf. Each paper separates what the evidence establishes from what is the firm's hypothesis, and ends on a test a lender can run on its own book. Contact: hello@nykadvisory.io.

## Papers

- [Paper I: A bureau score is built to rank everyone. No lender lends to everyone.](https://nykadvisory.io/writing/bureau-headline-numbers/index.md): A bureau score's measured performance is a property of the test it was measured in, not only of the score. Measured forward, on the population that applies, over the horizon the exposure runs, the same score answers a harder question and answers it less well. (September 2026; HTML: https://nykadvisory.io/writing/bureau-headline-numbers/)
- [Paper II: The bureau tells you where the customer stands. Cash flow tells you what is changing.](https://nykadvisory.io/writing/what-the-bureau-cannot-see/index.md): Cash flow is not a better bureau. It is a different observation of the same customer, and the value is in what the two together support that neither supports alone. The objective is not a better score; it is a better decision. (September 2026; HTML: https://nykadvisory.io/writing/what-the-bureau-cannot-see/)
- [Paper III: The employer is the shock the customer’s credit history cannot see](https://nykadvisory.io/writing/employer-shock/index.md): Job loss is one of the best-documented drivers of consumer default. In the Gulf it can threaten residence as well as income, and it arrives through the employer, often for many borrowers at once. Most lenders manage the employer only at approval; the value of an employer signal is the lead time it buys to act on the existing book. (October 2026; HTML: https://nykadvisory.io/writing/employer-shock/)

## The practice

- [Approach](https://nykadvisory.io/approach): six principles, with the CBUAE regulatory notes behind them.
- [Practice](https://nykadvisory.io/practice): 01 Acquisition economics · 02 Underwriting & credit risk · 03 Portfolio management & customer value · 04 Decision economics & risk-based pricing · 05 Decisioning infrastructure & applied AI.
- [Engagements](https://nykadvisory.io/engagements): four-week portfolio diagnostic; 10–14 week portfolio action programme; 8–12 week model or policy build; 6–9 month zero-to-first-loan for new lenders.
- [Point of view](https://nykadvisory.io/point-of-view): the four theses behind the papers.
- [About](https://nykadvisory.io/about): the founder, credentials, conventional and Islamic finance, and the method beyond lending.

## Optional

- [Full text of all papers in one file](https://nykadvisory.io/llms-full.txt)
- Paper IV (*The back book is where the unclaimed money is*) is forthcoming before the end of 2026.