Business loans·9 min read·Updated 7 September 2026

A £100,000 business loan: the turnover behind the number

By the CapExpand team

Reviewed by Alex Beardsley, Founder · UK commercial finance broker

Facts checked 7 September 2026 · first published 7 September 2026

Ask for £100,000 and the first thing a lender does is check whether your turnover supports it, before anybody looks at the credit file. Every unsecured lender at this size runs a sizing rule, and the four published ones on our panel are quite different from each other. iwoca says a credit limit is typically around one month's revenue, and elsewhere describes borrowing up to 20% of turnover. Nucleus caps its Business Loan at 25% of annual turnover. Fleximize lends up to four months of revenue unsecured.

Run £100,000 through each of those and you get four different companies. iwoca's 20% rule wants £500,000 of annual sales. Nucleus's 25% wants £400,000. Fleximize's four months wants £25,000 a month, which is £300,000 a year. iwoca's one-month rule, taken literally, wants £100,000 a month. Same request, and the yes or no depends on whose arithmetic you land in front of.

What a lender needs to see at £100,000

Affordability at £100,000 is a genuine test rather than a formality. Over 36 months the payment is around £3,440 a month, and a lender will want to see that absorbed by the account without the balance sagging. Where £50,000 could be argued on twelve months of bank data, £100,000 usually needs the accounts to agree with the statements. Funding Circle asks for the latest full unabbreviated accounts with a profit and loss and a balance sheet, plus up to eight months of statements, and says accounts more than two years old may need refiling. Its trading minimum is one year and it lends only to limited companies and LLPs.

Nucleus is the most explicit about what a six-figure loan needs. Its Business Loan factsheet asks for a minimum of one year of trading, two or more years for any term over 24 months, at least one filed account at Companies House, a UK homeowner giving the personal guarantee, and open banking as an essential rather than an option. Bizcap raised its low-documentation cap to £300,000 in January 2026, so £100,000 can be written without a full accounts pack there, and the pricing reflects that.

The homeowner question decides more £100,000 cases than most people expect. Nucleus wants a homeowner guarantor at any size on its Business Loan. Fleximize will not go past £20,000 for a non-homeowner even after three years of trading. If none of the directors owns property, the realistic route at this amount is a lender that prices on trading data alone, or moving the request onto asset finance or an invoice facility where the security is the asset or the debtor book rather than a director's house.

What our panel does at this size

What our panel does at £100,000

Unsecured lenders

Live products

Terms

1 to 120 months

Published rates from

4.1% pa

Distinct lender brands with a live unsecured product whose range covers £100,000, plus 17 lenders on secured terms. “From” rates are the lowest floor any of those products publishes; the typical floor is nearer 15.3%. Checked September 2026; panel composition changes over time; never an offer or a quote.

Worked example

Worked example · Nucleus Business Loan

£100,000 over three years for a wholesaler funding a bulk container order

Assumptions (illustrative, not a quote)

Limited company, three years trading, one filed set of accounts, homeowner director giving the guarantee
Borrowing £100,000 over 36 months
Interest 14.5% a year, the published rate Nucleus quotes for terms of 25 to 60 months
Arrangement fee 3.5% of the loan taken at drawdown, the published minimum
Annual turnover of at least £400,000, because Nucleus caps the loan at 25% of turnover

The arithmetic

Monthly rate r = 14.5% ÷ 12 = 1.20833%; payment = P × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)^−n) with P = £100,000 and n = 36
(1.0120833)^36 = 1.54092, so (1 + r)^−n = 0.64896 and the denominator is 0.35104
£100,000 × 0.0120833 = £1,208.33, and £1,208.33 ÷ 0.35104 = £3,442.10 a month
36 × £3,442.10 = £123,916 repaid, so the interest is £23,916
The 3.5% arrangement fee is £3,500 deducted at drawdown, so £96,500 lands in the account and the all-in cost of the £100,000 facility is £27,416

The arrangement fee is taken out of the money before it reaches you, so a business that needs £100,000 in the account has to borrow more than £100,000. That is a question to ask at the offer stage, not after the funds arrive short.

Who funds £100,000

Lender	Published range	At £100,000
iwoca	£1,000 to £1,000,000	Sizing is the constraint rather than the ceiling: around one month’s revenue, or roughly 20% of annual turnover, which puts £100,000 in reach at about £500,000 of sales. Rates run 1.5% to 5.7% a month with a fee of about 6% on terms beyond 24 months.
Funding Circle	£10,000 to £750,000	Its published calculator example is a £100,000 loan over 24 months: £4,815 a month, £8,668 interest and a £6,900 completion fee, for £115,568 in total. That is the clearest six-figure price on the panel.
Fleximize	£10,000 to £1,000,000 (unsecured to £500,000)	Four months of revenue means about £25,000 a month to reach £100,000 unsecured. Terms to 60 months, rates 0.9% to 2.9% a month, and a debenture may be added on top of the director guarantee.
Nucleus Business Loans	£10,000 to £500,000	Capped at 25% of annual turnover, so £100,000 needs £400,000 of sales. Two or more years trading for a term over 24 months, open banking essential, homeowner guarantee, and a minimum 3.5% arrangement fee at drawdown.
Bizcap	£5,000 to £500,000 (Small Business Loan)	Its low-documentation cap rose to £300,000 in January 2026, so £100,000 can be written on lighter paperwork. Terms are 3 to 12 months, which makes the monthly commitment on £100,000 substantial.
Capify	£10,000 to £3,000,000	Lands in Capify’s middle pricing tier, £75,000 to £150,000. Twelve months trading and £10,000 a month turnover is a low bar for this size, and pricing is a factor rate set by risk rather than a published rate.
Cubefunder	£5,000 to £100,000	Exactly on its ceiling. New applicants are capped at a twelve-month term, and the fixed cost is divided by the working days and collected daily, so £100,000 comes back in roughly 250 deductions.

Examples from the panel, not the full list, from each lender's published criteria as at 7 September 2026. Every figure is subject to the lender's own checks.

Sizing rules, not credit scores, decide this one

Below about £50,000, lenders can afford to be relaxed about sizing because the downside is contained. At £100,000 the sizing rule is the underwriting. Nucleus writes it into the factsheet as a maximum lend of 25% of annual turnover. Fleximize publishes a maximum of four months of revenue on unsecured lending, and two months on its secured product, which is the rare case of a lender lending less against more security because the secured deal is sized off the asset instead.

iwoca is the interesting one because it publishes two rules that do not agree. Its FAQ says a credit limit is typically around one month's revenue. Its homepage and calculator say borrow up to 20% of turnover, which is about two and a half months of revenue. Both appear on iwoca's own site. In the deals we place, the 20% figure is closer to what actually gets offered, and the one-month line reads like the conservative starting point rather than the ceiling.

The practical move is to work out which rule you clear before you choose a lender, rather than applying to four and collecting three declines. A company turning over £450,000 a year clears Nucleus's 25% comfortably and misses iwoca's 20% by £10,000. A company doing £30,000 a month clears Fleximize's four months with room to spare. None of that is visible from a rate table.

Six figures gets a human involved

Under £50,000 a lot of these decisions are made by a model reading an open banking feed. At £100,000 a person reads the file, and the file is longer. Funding Circle wants the full unabbreviated accounts, not the abridged version filed at Companies House, because it wants the profit and loss that abridged accounts leave out. Nucleus treats open banking as essential rather than an alternative to statements. Swishfund puts every personal guarantor on a video call before the money moves.

That extra scrutiny is why the timing claims soften as the number rises. Swishfund promises funds within a couple of hours of acceptance under £75,000, but says 48 hours from £75,000 to £400,000, and its how-it-works page says up to three working days at the top end. Funding Circle still quotes a decision in as little as an hour and payout typically within 48 hours, but the clock starts when the accounts arrive, and getting a set of full accounts out of an accountant in August is its own project.

One consequence worth planning for: the underwriter will ask about anything in the accounts that contradicts the statements. Director loan accounts, a big year-end stock movement, an intercompany balance, a dividend that looks like salary. None of these are fatal. All of them cost a day if the answer comes back slowly, and a £100,000 deal usually has a reason it needs to complete this month.

The panel narrows here, quietly

Forty-five brands cover £100,000 unsecured against 47 at £50,000, and the product count drops from 109 to 93. The panel is shrinking even though the money is more attractive, because the lenders that fall away are the small-ticket specialists whose ceilings sit at £75,000 or £100,000. Cubefunder is the clearest example on this page: £100,000 is the last pound of its range.

What replaces them is security. Seventeen lenders on the panel will look at £100,000 on secured terms, with terms running to 360 months, against fifteen at £50,000. A secured facility over a commercial property changes the shape of the deal completely, and for a business that owns its premises it is usually the cheaper answer. It is also slower, because a valuation and legal work sit in the middle of it.

The median published floor across the unsecured products covering £100,000 is 15.3% a year, down from 17% at £50,000. That trend continues all the way up, and it is the main financial argument for asking for the amount you actually need rather than a comfortable round number below it.

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Frequently asked questions

Between £300,000 and £500,000 a year depending on whose rule you land in front of. Nucleus caps at 25% of annual turnover, which needs £400,000. iwoca’s 20% of turnover figure needs £500,000. Fleximize’s four months of revenue needs about £25,000 a month, or £300,000 a year. None of them will lend on turnover alone if the margin does not support the repayment.

Nucleus requires two or more years of trading for any term over 24 months on its Business Loan, and at least one filed account in every case. Funding Circle asks for one year of trading and the latest full unabbreviated accounts, and warns that accounts more than two years old may need refiling. A company with one filed year can still borrow £100,000, but usually over a shorter term.

It can. Nucleus applies a minimum 3.5% arrangement fee at drawdown, which takes £3,500 out of a £100,000 facility before it reaches your account. Swishfund adds its arrangement fee to the loan instead, so you repay more rather than receive less. Funding Circle charges a completion fee when you take out the loan. Ask which of the three shapes you are being offered.

No. Fleximize lends unsecured to £500,000 and Funding Circle to £750,000, and £100,000 sits comfortably below both. Forty-five brands on our panel have a live unsecured product covering it. What you will not avoid is a personal guarantee, and at Nucleus the guarantor must be a homeowner.

Some lenders permit it and others treat it as a red flag. Bizcap says businesses that did not receive as much as they hoped from one lender are welcome to apply for further funding. Nucleus says its revenue-based loan can sit on top of an existing merchant cash advance. Capify will not stack at all and insists on paying the other lender out, and only once that loan is more than half repaid.

Usually on rate, rarely on flexibility. With Bank Rate at 3.75% as at 7 September 2026, a bank overdraft at this size is priced over base and charged only on what you draw, whereas a term loan charges interest on the full balance from day one. The trade is that overdrafts at six figures are hard to obtain and repayable on demand, which is why so much working capital ends up on term facilities instead.

A fixed £3,440 a month over three years is unforgiving of a quiet February. Fleximize offers repayment holidays after three successful repayments, though it does not publish how interest is treated during one. Cubefunder says it will not charge late fees if an overrun is pre-agreed. For genuinely lumpy trade, a facility that flexes with sales is the more honest fit, which is what the sibling page on this amount covers.

Sources and method

Lender ranges were checked against the sources below on 7 September 2026. Panel counts come from our September 2026 lender-platform extract, available products only.