Kernvo

What it is

Kernvo is core banking for savings-and-loans companies and rural banks — the institutions too large for a spreadsheet and too small to be sold a core banking licence at bank prices. Customers, the cash desk, the loan book and the general ledger are one system, so the moment a teller takes a deposit the books already know about it.

It ships at kernvo.com. The work started under the name Franlind, which is why the repositories below still carry it — same product, same architecture, new name.

The rule the whole thing is built on

Every posting writes a balanced double-entry journal by itself. A journal whose debits and credits differ is refused at the engine, not flagged in a report afterwards. An unbalanced ledger is impossible rather than merely unlikely, and the trial balance, income and expenditure statement and balance sheet are drawn from the postings instead of typed up after them.

That one decision is what makes the rest safe to build.

A day in the branch

Every role in the building gets the screen it needs, and they all write to the same ledger.

1. The officer takes the customer on — registration with a KYC document checklist, guarantors, risk rating, blacklisting, and a 360° page showing every account, loan and posting that customer has ever had. Nobody gets a loan without verified KYC, and that rule lives in the code rather than the training manual.
2. The teller works the cash desk — deposits, withdrawals and internal transfers against 14-digit account numbers with a check digit, plus minimum balances, overdrafts, dormancy, freezing and closure that settles the balance. Cash must pass through an open till, so the drawer reconciles at close of business and any variance has a name against it.
3. The credit team runs the loan book — application, approval, disbursement and repayment, with generated schedules, penalty accrual, settlement quotes, rescheduling and write-offs. Repayments allocate penalty, then interest, then principal; the officer who booked a loan cannot approve it.
4. The accountant closes the books — chart of accounts, manual journals, expense capture and statements, all drawn from the postings.
5. The owner sees all of it — branches, staff on a six-role permission matrix, per-branch scoping, till reconciliation per teller, and reports on portfolio, arrears, cash book, teller activity and dormancy, with CSV export.

Dual control

A role says what somebody may do. It does not say what they may do alone, and the second question is the one that loses money. Limits are configurable per institution, and above them a posting waits for a second pair of eyes — enforced in the posting engine, not in a policy taped to the counter.

What is at risk

Every active loan is graded by how late its oldest unpaid instalment is — current, OLEM, substandard, doubtful, loss — and provided for as a percentage of principal at risk. A provision run posts only the movement against what the ledger already carries, so re-running one is safe.

Why it is split across repositories

A double-entry ledger has to be the only writer of balances; every other surface reads projections of it. Keeping the ledger in its own service means the web and mobile clients can move quickly without ever being in a position to invent a balance. The onboarding form engine is separate for the same reason — application flows change constantly for regulatory and product reasons, and they should never require a release of the banking client.