Will you actually
qualify?

Possibly, if you have been trading six months and have turnover to show. The choice is narrow and the price reflects it. If you take card payments, revenue-based funding often works where a term loan will not.

Not automatically. An old, satisfied CCJ matters far less than people fear. Recent, unsatisfied or multiple judgments are a different matter. How your bank account behaves over the last three months carries more weight than one historic entry.

Not for everything, but it opens more of the panel, especially above £20,000. If no director owns a home we will tell you which lenders remain rather than putting you through applications that will be declined.

Thresholds on our panel start around £30,000 a year, with one lender wanting £60,000 and roughly £5,000 a month going through the account. The ratio matters as much as the total: asking for more than about a quarter of annual turnover invites questions wherever you apply.

Not from this panel, no. Six months of trading with turnover to show is roughly the floor, and below that we would be wasting your time and leaving searches on your file. What opens up at six months and at a year.

Yes. The lenders on our panel fund UK-registered businesses trading in the UK, and the facility is in sterling. A UK company with overseas customers is fine and common, particularly in invoice finance, though it can narrow which providers will look at the ledger.

Often, yes, and it is one of the most common reasons people come to us. “Bad credit” covers a wide range: a satisfied CCJ from three years ago is a different conversation from a default last quarter. What tends to decide it is how the bank account has behaved over the last three months, because that is current and a filed account is not. Expect a narrower choice and a higher price rather than a flat no.

We will not give you a number, because the panel does not work to one and any figure we published would be wrong for most of it. Lenders score differently, weight recent conduct far above old entries, and several look at the bank statements before the score. Ask us what is open to you rather than trying to reverse-engineer a threshold.

Yes, and faster than most people assume, because recent conduct outweighs old entries almost everywhere. File accounts on time rather than at the deadline. Pay suppliers to terms, so the trade references are clean. Keep the account out of unarranged overdraft, since the last three months of statements carry more weight than the score itself. Satisfy any judgment and check the register shows it. Six months of that changes which lenders will look at you.

At these sizes, usually yes. Most unsecured lending to a small company comes with a director’s guarantee, and a guarantee makes your personal file directly relevant to the decision. The two files stay separate; the decision rarely does.

Filed accounts and how late they were filed, County Court Judgments, how promptly you pay suppliers, how much credit you already have against how much you use, and how long the company has existed. Directors’ personal files are usually looked at as well on smaller facilities, because a guarantee makes them relevant.

We will say so, quickly, rather than submitting applications that leave searches on your file for nothing. Where we can we will tell you what would change the answer, which is usually a few more months of trading or a filed set of accounts.