Last updated: 27 August 2026. This is a working document. It reflects our current best-efforts view of the profile of debtor we look to work with, and it will evolve as our underwriting practice matures. Nothing on this page should be read as a final, closed, or exhaustive statement, and nothing on it implies that any named company has any relationship with, has engaged with, or has endorsed SukukFi.

Approved Debtor Profile

When SukukFi finances a telecom business’s receivables, the receivable is only as good as the customer who owes it — the Approved Debtor. This page describes how we decide whether a debtor’s obligation is one we’re prepared to fund against, and gives illustrative examples of the kind of company that profile describes.

The test: substance, not a conventional credit file

We do not fund receivables owed by any company that simply files accounts. The debtor pool we look to work with is Tier-1 telecom carriers and mobile network operators — licensed, infrastructure-owning businesses with a live, paying subscriber or interconnect base. The question we ask is not “does this company look creditworthy on a balance sheet.” It’s:

Is this a company that can disappear, or is it a fixed structure that is here to stay?

A licensed carrier with spectrum, physical network infrastructure, and live subscribers cannot simply vanish the way a thinly capitalised trading company can. That substance is what we test for — and it is checkable even where no audited financial statements exist, which is the ordinary condition for a private mid-market telecom operator. We look for:

• A licensed operating status — spectrum, telecom operator authorisation, or the regulatory equivalent, confirmed against a public regulator record.
• Physical infrastructure — an owned network: fibre, spectrum, data centres, or subsea/terrestrial capacity.
• A live, paying customer base — for a retail operator, a reported subscriber base; for a pure wholesale or international carrier, network reach and standing in the industry bodies that govern carrier-to-carrier interconnect, principally GSMA’s Wholesale Agreements and Solutions Group.
• Active operation — not dormant, not winding down.

Where GSMA membership exists, we treat it as useful independent corroboration of this test — a licensed mobile network operator’s Operator-tier membership, or a wholesale carrier’s participation in GSMA’s wholesale interconnect working group, is a real, checkable industry signal, not something we assert unsupported.

The absence of audited financials, or a past default on unrelated financial debt, is disclosed where relevant — it is not on its own a reason to exclude a debtor that clearly satisfies the substance test above. A licensed Tier-1 operator with a live subscriber base and owned infrastructure does not become less real because its balance sheet isn’t public.

Jurisdiction

Every debtor is screened against sanctions and financial-crime jurisdiction lists before being considered. Debtors domiciled in comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions are never eligible.

This screening is separate from, and lighter-touch than, jurisdiction restrictions on carriers who onboard to the CommTrade platform. An Approved Debtor never onboards to SukukFi’s platform, is never a CommTrade Participant, and undergoes no KYB with us — we simply take an assignment of an amount they already owe to one of our telecom clients under an ordinary commercial contract. Carriers who do onboard to the platform face a stricter jurisdiction policy, set out in full in Access & Compliance. For Approved Debtors, a jurisdiction under increased monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force is a reason for closer review before a debtor is approved, not an automatic exclusion — the same standard the FATF itself applies.

Illustrative examples

The companies below illustrate the profile described above. They are shown as examples of the kind of company this test describes, not a confirmed, exhaustive, or exclusive list, and not a statement that SukukFi currently works with, or has approached, any company named. This section will grow as our review continues.

Europe

Middle East & Gulf

Africa

South Asia

East Asia

Southeast Asia

Oceania

North America

Latin America

Wholesale and international carriers

These companies trade capacity carrier-to-carrier rather than serving retail subscribers directly — the profile closest to SukukFi’s own business.

How we build this list

We cross-reference public regulator records, GSMA’s own membership categories, and participation in the industry’s own wholesale-carrier trade events, against the substance test above. This is an active, ongoing process, not a one-time exercise — we expect to keep adding to it.

To discuss how this applies to a specific commercial relationship, contact us via Contact & Support.