How Much Business Funding Can I Get?

Invoice Finance Advances, Worked Through

What Lenders Read When Sizing an Amount

Why the amount changes the lender

The percentages above describe how invoice finance is sized. The other half of the answer is which lenders are even in the room at the amount you want, because a figure nobody funds is not a figure. Each lender publishes its own minimum and maximum, so the amount decides whose criteria the case meets. Secured lending has a floor of its own at the small end, because the legal cost of taking a charge does not pay for itself on a small loan.

Term moves with size too. A small unsecured loan is usually repaid over a few years, while a loan secured on property can run far longer, because a charge over the building supports a schedule an unsecured lender would never write.

Each product answers the question differently

Invoice finance is sized on the ledger: a business turning over £300,000 a year on 45-day terms carries roughly £37,000 of unpaid invoices at any moment, and at an advance of 85 percent, illustrative and chosen for the arithmetic, not a rate any lender has quoted, that is about £31,000 available, less anything the funder excludes for age, dispute or customer concentration. Asset finance is sized on the asset and the deposit, which is why it is the one product where the amount is decided before the application starts.

Term lending is the odd one out, because it is sized on affordability rather than on a single number the lender can see. An unsecured lender is asking whether the business can carry the instalment out of trading profit after everything it already owes, so existing borrowing reduces the figure more sharply here than on any of the others. A business with other borrowing running will commonly be offered less on a term loan than its turnover alone would suggest, which is the arithmetic behind refinancing rather than adding.

We arrange finance for UK limited companies and LLPs through the lenders whose published criteria cover the amount, the product and the trading history, and nothing is submitted until you have chosen a lender. Enquiring does not affect your credit score. If you apply to a lender, it runs its own credit search, which may be recorded on your file. This page is general information, not advice, and every amount here is a guide rather than a quote.