Business loans, finance and funding in Derby
Where does a Derby business borrow in 2026?
Derby is thirty minutes from our office in Annesley, so a Derby enquiry lands with a case handler who has driven past Pride Park more times than he can count. Behind it is our lender panel, and a funding scope of £10,000 upwards.
Business loans in Derby
Derby borrows differently from its neighbours. Leicester asks about invoices; Derby asks about machines. The city's engineering base means a large share of what we place here is asset finance, often with an unsecured term loan behind it for working capital. We are the commercial finance broker in that arrangement. The lender reads the file and makes its own decision.
Consider £100,000 unsecured, a common ask from a Pride Park firm buying stock ahead of a contract. A loan of that size is priced on the last two sets of accounts and a director's guarantee. Where the business owns its unit, a secured loan is also available, with its term and cost set by the lender and a charge over the property.
One call gathers the figures. One pack goes out. The person who picked up the phone stays on the file until the lenders have decided, and no lender sees anything until you have said so.
What we see from Derby businesses
The supply-chain machinist is the Derby case we know best. A twelve-person firm in Sinfin or Spondon holds a contract with a large aerospace or rail customer, gets paid on 60 or 90-day terms, and needs a five-axis machine that costs more than a year's profit. Two products are relevant here. Invoice finance funds the gap between delivery and payment, and hire purchase spreads the cost of a machine over a term such as 48 or 60 months, secured on the machine itself.
Pride Park offices and the professional firms around Friar Gate often ask about term loans, which lenders size on two years of accounts. Derby's 505 health and social work enterprises, dental and veterinary practices among them, fall in the same group, with the difference that a commercial mortgage lender that lends against a practice's premises publishes its own criteria for one.
Funding types Derby firms ask about, and how each is sized
| Funding type | Typically used by | How it is sized |
|---|---|---|
| Asset finance | Machine tools, vans and plant for Sinfin and Spondon engineering firms | On the price of the machine |
| Invoice finance | Suppliers paid on 60 or 90-day terms by a large customer | On the debtor book |
| Commercial mortgage | A trading company buying the unit it already rents | On the value of the unit |
Each lender publishes its own timescale, and they change. The lender assesses every case on its own numbers.
What lenders see in Derby
Derby held 7,375 VAT or PAYE registered enterprises in March 2025, a shade down on the 7,410 of March 2024, inside a Derbyshire total of 29,410 (Nomis dataset NM_142_1, read 21 September 2026). The largest sector by count is wholesale and retail at 1,300, with professional, scientific and technical firms at 1,030, construction at 940, transport and storage at 535, business administration at 530 and health at 505. Information and communication reaches 430. 6,385 of the enterprises employ fewer than ten people and 45 employ 250 or more, and it is that top band, the rail and aerospace primes, that the smaller firms invoice. The 24 September 2025 ONS bulletin logged a 0.6% fall across the East Midlands, the largest of any region.
The British Business Bank's East Midlands factsheet of 7 October 2025 recorded 6,579 SME loan and overdraft approvals in the region in 2024, worth £892m. The Bank of England's Agents, reporting on 11 September 2026, said “Banks are prepared to lend across all sizes of firm but prefer larger, existing clients” and noted that “Increased exports are supporting slight growth in manufacturing output”. For a Derby exporter that is the climate: lenders with appetite, and a preference for the firm that already banks with them, which is exactly the gap a lender panel is for.
Infinity Park, Duckworth Square and the money behind them
Three public decisions shape the Derby market a lender is pricing into. The East Midlands Investment Zone, whose strategy the combined county authority published in November 2025, is backed by up to £160m of government funding over ten years and names Infinity Park Derby as its hub for nuclear and advanced manufacturing, targeting 4,300 jobs and £380m of private investment across its sites, with full business rates relief for up to five years on the designated land. The same document notes that “areas like Derby and South Derbyshire demonstrate strong productivity”.
On 6 May 2026 Derby City Council put £2m of enabling works at Duckworth Square before its Cabinet for 13 May 2026, preparing the site for Grade A offices, with up to £250,000 of feasibility money from the combined authority and a decision on the Great British Railways headquarters expected before the end of 2026. Then on 8 June 2026 the East Midlands Combined County Authority approved a £107m Local Growth Fund for 2026 to 2030: £21m for business support, £32m for strategic site regeneration, £12m for innovation, £17m for skills and £20m for communities, with project allocations still to be announced.
None of that is a loan from us, and a grant programme is not a lender. What it does is put fit-outs, relocations and new kit on Derby firms' agendas, and those areassets a lender can take title to: an office fit-out, solar panels or a fleet of electric cars can each go on hire purchase or a lease.
The criteria that decide a Derby case
Trading age first. Each unsecured lender publishes its own minimum trading history, so a firm spun out of a redundancy round in 2025 is judged on that minimum until its first accounts are filed. Invoice lenders lean on the customer who owes the money, which helps a new Derby supplier with a creditworthy buyer.
Credit history comes second and homeownership third. Each lender draws those lines in its own place, and an asset lender has the machine to fall back on where an unsecured lender has only the balance sheet. We check all three against your figures before a lender hears your name.
Lender criteria change over time, and nothing here is a decision on any Derby business.
Where we work in Derbyshire
From Annesley the A38 puts Derby city centre half an hour away, and Ilkeston, Long Eaton, Belper, Ripley and Ashbourne are all closer than that or not much further. Chesterfield and Buxton follow by phone and email like everywhere else. Derbyshire's 29,410 enterprises and Nottinghamshire's 27,330 (Nomis, March 2025) are the two counties we drive around most, and the border between them means nothing to how a case is run.
To be exact about what we are: CapExpand Ltd is a broker of business finance and a commercial finance broker, not a lender and not an adviser. We do not give investment, pension or tax advice and we do not arrange residential mortgages or personal loans.
We work with UK limited companies and LLPs only, for business and commercial purposes.
The panel behind this page
We have access to a range of UK commercial finance lenders through our principal, White Rose Finance Group Limited. Some of them write asset finance. Lenders set different criteria on trading history, seasonality and credit history, and each lender makes its own decision.
We check each lender’s published criteria first, and your case goes only to lenders whose requirements it meets. How a case is checked against criteria is set out on our how we work page.
Derby business loan questions
How does a Derby business get a loan through CapExpand?
Send the form or ring us. A named case handler collects your last filed accounts and recent statements, checks them against the published criteria of the lenders on our panel, and puts the case only to the lenders whose criteria it meets. Each lender then decides for itself.
Which types of finance are available to an engineering firm in the Derby supply chain?
Two are commonly used. Invoice finance funds the 60 or 90-day terms a large customer imposes. Asset finance pays for the machine on the floor, and factory plant is a mainstream class for asset lenders. Which, if either, a firm uses is its own decision.
Does a director need to own a home to borrow in Derby?
Not always. Each unsecured lender publishes its own view of a director who does not own a home. That single criterion turns away more applications than credit history does, which is why we check it before anything is sent.
How far is CapExpand from Derby?
About thirty minutes. Our only office is at Pure Offices in Annesley, Nottinghamshire, up the A38 and A610, and a Derby case is handled by phone and email with a visit where it earns its petrol.
How is CapExpand paid on a Derby deal?
We will receive commission from lenders. Different lenders pay different amounts depending on different commission models. For transparency we work with varying commission models including fixed fee, fixed rate of commission and percentage of the amount you borrow. Further details of the commission model, calculation and amount will be disclosed to you throughout your customer journey. Funding is subject to status and the lender's own checks.
Do you work with sole traders in Derby?
No. We arrange finance for UK limited companies and LLPs only, so we cannot take a sole trader or partnership enquiry forward.
Enquire about finance for a Derby business
Two minutes on the form, then a call from the named case handler who will run it. 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. We read your figures against what each lender publishes and put the case only to the lenders whose published criteria it meets, once you have said so.
Start the formOther cities we cover in East Midlands: Leicester, Lincoln, Mansfield, Northampton, Nottingham.
Firms in Derby that invoice other businesses on terms have their own page: invoice finance in Derby.
Sources and references
Derby figures were read from the sources below on 21 September 2026. Nomis rounds every count to the nearest five, and the council and combined authority figures carry the dates of the releases they came from.
- ONS, UK business: activity, size and location 2025 (24 September 2025)
- Nomis, UK Business Counts 2025 (dataset NM_142_1): Derby and Derbyshire enterprises by industry and size band, read 21 September 2026
- British Business Bank, English regions factsheets, Nations and Regions Tracker 2025 (PDF, 7 October 2025)
- Bank of England, Agents’ summary of business conditions, September 2026 (11 September 2026)
- Derby City Council, multi-million pound investment pipeline to Cabinet (6 May 2026)
- East Midlands Combined County Authority, Local Growth Fund approval (8 June 2026)
- East Midlands Combined County Authority, East Midlands Investment Zone Strategy and Investment Plan (PDF, November 2025)
- Companies House: CapExpand Ltd 14433858
CapExpand Ltd (FRN 1060885) is a credit broker and an Appointed Representative of White Rose Finance Group Limited (FRN 630772), which is directly authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are a broker, not a lender. We work with UK limited companies and LLPs only, for business and commercial purposes. We do not provide financial advice.