CMA Data: Format, 6 Statements & Free Excel Template

Your bank asked for CMA data. Your CA quoted a fee and a two-week timeline. Before you pay anyone, it helps to know what the document actually is. It is not complicated. It is six statements that tell one story about your business, and this guide shows you each one.

What Is CMA Data in Indian Banking?

CMA data is a standard set of financial statements that a borrower submits to the bank when applying for a working capital loan, or when renewing or enhancing an existing limit. CMA stands for Credit Monitoring Arrangement.

Think of it as your business's financial story told the way a credit officer wants to hear it. Your audited balance sheet says what happened. CMA data says what happened, what is happening now, and what you expect to happen over the next two years, all arranged so the bank can judge one thing: how much working capital you actually need, and whether you can repay it.

The format goes back to 1988. That year the RBI replaced prior authorisation under the old Credit Authorisation Scheme with a system of post-sanction scrutiny, and this system was the Credit Monitoring Arrangement. (The working-capital norms the arrangement policed came from the Tandon and Chore Committees, per RBI's own account.) In April 1997 the RBI withdrew the prescription of maximum permissible bank finance, and the formal reporting system wound down after that. Banks kept the format anyway, because it works. So when your bank asks for CMA data today, it is following bank practice built on that old RBI format, not a live RBI mandate.

Is CMA Data Mandatory? Who Has to Submit It?

Here is the honest answer: it depends on your bank and your limit size. There is no single live RBI circular that says every borrower above a fixed amount must submit CMA data. That is why the internet disagrees with itself. One site says ₹10 lakh, another says ₹2 crore, a third says ₹5 lakh. None of them cite a source.

What we can say with sources: RBI records show the CMA return (Form A) covered borrowers with working capital limits of ₹10 crore or more, reported quarterly to the RBI. Those reporting arrangements belonged to a system that was liberalised in April 1997 and wound down after that.

Today, each bank's own credit policy sets the cutoff. In practice, most banks start asking for CMA data when working capital limits cross roughly ₹1 crore, and almost always ask for it above ₹5 crore. Borrowers assessed under the Nayak simplified turnover method are assessed through that method instead of a CMA-format appraisal. If you are unsure, ask your relationship manager. It takes one phone call and saves a returned file. Your bank asks for fresh CMA data at each annual renewal, since the projections must cover the coming year. The borrower's renewal playbook explains what that renewal file needs and the four ways it can end.

What Are the 6 Statements of CMA Data?

The classic format has six statements. Modern bank templates sometimes split them into seven by adding a limits summary or a ratio analysis page. The core six have not changed since the Tandon days.

The standard CMA covers five comparative years: two audited years, one provisional or estimated year, and two projected years. So a CMA prepared in late 2026 typically shows FY24 and FY25 as audited, FY26 as provisional, and FY27 and FY28 as projected.

Let us walk through each statement with a running example. Our fictional company is Sharma Trading Co., a Mumbai FMCG distributor. All figures are in ₹ lakh. The same numbers flow through every statement, and the free template at the end of this guide does the same.

Statement I: existing and proposed limits

This is the cover page of your ask. It lists each facility, the current limit, and the proposed limit.

Keep this page consistent with everything that follows. If Statement V computes an MPBF of ₹180 lakh and you ask for ₹200 lakh of cash credit, the officer will spot the gap on page one.

Statement II: operating statement

This is your profit and loss account, laid out for five years side by side. The bank reads it for trend: are sales growing, are margins stable, is profit enough to cover interest?

Two things matter here more than the totals. First, the projections must look believable. Sales growing 15 to 18 percent a year for a distributor is plausible. Sales doubling with no explanation is not, and it is the fastest way to get your file returned. Second, interest coverage: in FY28, PBDIT of 85 against interest of 16 gives comfortable coverage. Banks do this math in their heads. Make it easy for them.

Statement III: analysis of balance sheet

This rearranges your balance sheet so the funding structure is obvious: what the owners put in, what lenders put in, and where it all sits.

Watch the story this tells. Reserves grow every year because profits are retained. Term loans shrink as they are repaid. Current assets grow faster than current liabilities, which is exactly what a growing trading business looks like. The bank also checks that long-term money funds long-term assets: share capital plus reserves plus term loans comfortably cover the net block in every year. That is called the Tandon discipline, and officers still look for it.

Statement IV: comparative statement of current assets and current liabilities

This is the statement the credit officer spends the most time on. It breaks current assets and current liabilities into their parts, year by year.

Two ratios jump out. Inventory plus receivables in FY28 is ₹290 lakh against sales of ₹850 lakh, roughly four months of sales locked in stock and debtors. That is normal for distribution. And current assets of ₹353 lakh against current liabilities of ₹85 lakh is a healthy position before the bank even lends. Statement V will use exactly these two totals.

Statement V: computation of MPBF

This is the payoff page. It takes the Statement IV totals and applies the Tandon method to compute the Maximum Permissible Bank Finance: the loan limit the bank can justify on paper.

Using Tandon Method II on the FY28 projections: 75 percent of current assets minus current liabilities (excluding bank borrowings).

0.75 × 353 − 85 = 264.75 − 85 = ₹179.75 lakh, roughly ₹180 lakh.

The proposed cash credit of ₹70 lakh sits well inside that. The current ratio after borrowing would be 353 / (85 + 70) = 2.28:1, comfortably above the 1.33:1 minimum banks look for under Method II.

Statement V is really a small calculator sitting on top of Statement IV. Our MPBF guide works through all three Tandon methods and the Nayak turnover method with an interactive calculator, if you want the full mechanics. If your business trades rather than manufactures, see our MPBF for traders vs manufacturers guide for why the same turnover produces a smaller limit.

Statement VI: fund flow statement

The fund flow statement answers one question: where did the money come from, and where did it go? For FY27, the sources are PAT of 37, depreciation of 7, increase in bank borrowings of 5, and increase in current liabilities of 8, totaling ₹57 lakh. The uses are increase in current assets of 38, additions to net block of 11, and term loan repayment of 8, also ₹57 lakh. Sources equal uses. Every year.

Nobody reads this statement for insight. They read it for arithmetic. If it does not tally, the officer assumes the rest of the file is sloppy too. If you keep mixing it up with the cash budget, our cash budget vs fund flow comparison shows where the two differ.

How Do the 6 Statements Tie Together?

This is the part that gets files returned. The six statements are not six separate documents. They are one dataset shown six ways, and every number that appears twice must match. Before you submit, run these seven checks:

Check 1 is the classic. Sharma Trading's FY25 PAT is ₹23 lakh and reserves move from 85 to 108, exactly ₹23 lakh. If the promoter withdrew ₹5 lakh and nobody recorded it, reserves would move by only 18 and the file comes back. The free template has all seven checks built in as PASS/FAIL cells, so you catch this before the bank does.

What Is the Difference Between CMA Data and CAM?

Borrowers confuse these two constantly, so let us settle it. CMA data is what you submit to the bank. CAM, the Credit Appraisal Memorandum, is what the bank writes about you, using your CMA data plus your bank statements, the site visit report, and the officer's own assessment.

A clean CMA makes the officer's CAM easy to write, and an easy CAM gets sanctioned faster. Our CAM guide explains what happens on the bank's side of the desk once your CMA lands there. The CAM also changes with the facility, as our term loan vs working capital CAM comparison shows. When the sanction letter arrives, read every clause before you sign, with our sanction-letter clause guide in hand.

Why Do Banks Return CMA Files?

Credit officers see hundreds of these. The same five mistakes cause most returns:

1. The statements do not tie together. This is the number one reason. PAT does not flow into reserves, or the Statement IV totals do not match Statement III. Run the seven checks above.
2. Projections with no logic. Sales jump 80 percent in the projected years with no new branch, product, or contract to explain it. Project from something: past growth, confirmed orders, capacity. When actuals keep missing the projections you filed, that slippage also becomes one of the early warning signals the bank's risk team watches.
3. MPBF computed on the wrong method. Some borrowers compute 75 percent of net working capital (Method I) while their bank appraises on Method II. The two give different limits. Ask the bank which method it follows, or show the working for Method II, which most banks use. The margin your own funds must contribute is the other half of this computation. Our margin money guide explains how banks size it and where borrowers get it wrong.
4. The provisional year is actually audited, or vice versa. Label each year honestly. Officers cross-check with your filed financials. Our provisional vs projected vs audited guide maps which label belongs on which year.
5. Fund flow does not reconcile. If sources do not equal uses, it signals the whole file was assembled carelessly, even if the business is fine.

Our CMA rejections guide lists the ten mistakes banks flag most, with the officer view on each one. When the errors cross into deliberate misreporting, the file can move past rejection into a forensic audit, which is a different and much harder process.

Where Can I Download a Free CMA Data Excel Format?

This is the most asked question about CMA data on the internet, and most answers are a gated download, a paid course, or someone's email address. So we built one and are giving it away.

The template contains all six statements plus the limits summary and the seven reconciliation checks, with every formula visible. You overwrite the yellow input cells with your numbers. Everything else recalculates, including Statement V's MPBF and the PASS/FAIL checks. One fictional company, Sharma Trading Co., runs through it as a worked example so you can see how the statements connect before you type a single number.

Four steps to use it: overwrite the yellow cells with your trial balance numbers, flip to the Checks sheet and fix anything red, sanity-check the MPBF in Statement V against the limit you plan to ask for, and hand the file to your CA for review. It does not replace your CA. It means you walk in understanding your own numbers, which is exactly what makes a CA's job faster and your file cleaner.

Building this by hand in Excel is exactly where errors creep in. Most CMA mistakes we see are not conceptual; they are spreadsheet mistakes, a wrong cell reference here, a total that does not pick up a new row there. If you want the wider picture on why manual spreadsheet work keeps failing in credit analysis, read why manual Excel bank analysis fails.

Sources

• RBI speech on the regulatory framework for credit: replacement of prior authorisation under the Credit Authorisation Scheme with post-sanction scrutiny in 1988, Tandon and Chore Committees' role in working-capital norms, and withdrawal of the MPBF prescription in April 1997.
• RBI publication report on financial-sector reform, para 3.48: prior authorisation replaced by post-sanction scrutiny in 1988.
• RBI Working Group report: Form A “Under Credit Monitoring Arrangement” covering borrowers with working capital limits of ₹10 crore or above.
• RBI Master Circular on lending to the MSME sector (2010): the Nayak Committee simplified turnover method for working capital assessment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated: 19 October 2026. Historical claims in this article were checked against primary RBI sources; see the Sources section above. The workbook's worked example uses a fictional company.