Allica Bank review 2026: the margins over Base Rate, and the 0.50% already inside them

Who Allica are, and which company actually lends to you

Allica Bank Limited is company 07706156 at Companies House, incorporated on 15 July 2011 and registered at 15 Worship Street in the City. It has worn three previous names: Civilised Investments, then Civilised Bank, then Allica Limited, arriving at Allica Bank in September 2019. That is a young bank with an old company number, which is the usual shape of a licence application that took years.

Its own footer splits the group into three regulatory boxes and the distinction is worth a minute. The bank is “authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (FRN: 821851)”, and its savings and current accounts sit inside that. Then, in the same paragraph: “Allica Bank lending products are not regulated products.” Asset finance and growth finance are written by Allica Financial Services Limited (12784979) and bridging by Allica Bridging Finance Limited (10859711), both of which Allica describes as “not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority or the Financial Conduct Authority”. None of that is unusual, because lending to a limited company is outside the consumer credit regime anyway, but it does mean a commercial mortgage from Allica is an unregulated contract and the offer letter is your protection.

The FSCS point gets muddled often enough to be worth stating. Allica says “any eligible deposit of up to £120,000 will be protected”, the figure having risen from £85,000 on 1 December 2025. That protects money you deposit. It does nothing for money you borrow, and no lender in this market offers a borrower anything comparable.

On scale, Allica's results release of 15 April 2026 reports gross revenue of £371.3m for 2025, up 27%, underlying pre-tax profit of £43.7m, total lending of £3.7bn and deposits of £5.7bn. Commercial mortgages are the bulk of the book at £2.4bn, up 35%, with asset finance at £507m and growth finance at £171m. It advanced over £1.3bn of new lending in 2025, a second consecutive year above £1bn, closed a $155m Series D in February 2026, bought Tuscan Capital in 2024 to enter bridging and Kriya in 2025 for embedded finance, and applied for a Swedish banking licence in August 2026. This is a lender expanding its book, not defending it.

What Allica lends, and the sizes

The commercial mortgage range starts at £150,000 and goes to £10m for owner-occupiers, capped at £5m for a first-time commercial buyer, on terms up to 30 years on capital and interest with a capital repayment holiday of up to two years available. Investment lending runs to £15m from the same £150,000 floor, or £200,000 for specialist buy-to-let, on five year interest-only or partially amortising terms. Healthcare is its own book: £500,000 to £15m, 30 years for an experienced operator and 20 for a first-time one, covering care homes, specialist care and children's day nurseries.

Outside property, Allica writes unsecured business loans of £25,001 to £150,000 over one to five years, asset finance from £25,000 to £2.5m over a maximum seven years with up to 100% advance, growth finance of £1m to £15m over three to six years, and a business overdraft to £2m. Bridging came in with the Tuscan acquisition and runs from £150,000 to £10m on residential and £250,000 to £2m on refurbishment against gross development value, over three to 24 months, though those figures come from the February 2025 guide rather than a 2026 document.

One product in the navigation does not exist as a page. Allica lists invoice finance in its menu and the URL returns a 404. Allica bought Kriya during 2025 and the invoice line is most likely that proposition being folded in, but we could not verify a live product, so we place invoice cases elsewhere on the invoice finance panel until Allica publishes one.

What an Allica commercial mortgage costs

Here is the April 2026 guide in full on the two lines that matter most. Owner-occupied commercial is 6.50% fixed or 2.30% over Base Rate at or under 65% LTV, and 6.85% or 2.65% above it. Owner-occupied semi-commercial is 6.00% or 1.80% at or under 65%, and 6.75% or 2.55% above. On the investment side, commercial is 7.90% or 3.70% at or under 65% and 8.10% or 3.90% above; semi-commercial is 6.30% or 2.35% and 7.15% or 3.20%. Specialist buy-to-let is quoted fixed only, at 6.20% and 6.75%. Owner-occupied hotels are priced on vacant possession value and climb by LTV, from 6.50% or 2.30% at 65% to 7.70% or 3.60% at 100% of vacant possession, capped at 65% of market value.

Healthcare margins are stated separately. Care homes with an experienced operator are 2.10% over Base Rate at 60% of first market value and 2.30% at 70%. A first-time care home buyer pays 2.50% to 2.75%. Specialist care runs 2.10% to 2.50% and children's day nurseries 2.10% to 2.75%. At a Base Rate of 3.75% the cheapest of those is a 5.85% variable rate on a care home, which is a keen number for a trading asset.

A word on the floor, because it matters if Base Rate falls. Allica's guide of 11 February 2025 said in terms that variable pricing was subject to “a minimum Base Rate of 1.5%” and that fixed rates reverted subject to the same floor. That sentence does not appear anywhere in the 27 April 2026 guide, and it is not on the live commercial mortgages page either. We are not going to tell you Allica applies a 1.5% floor when its current documents do not say so, and we are not going to tell you it has been removed either. Treat it as unverified and get the answer in writing from the bank before you price a case on a falling-rate assumption.

Fees are published and are not small. The arrangement fee is 1.5% on owner-occupied lending and 2.0% on investment, addable to the loan up to £3m, on top of a £500 commitment fee payable before valuation and refunded at drawdown. A further advance costs 1.5% of the additional amount with a £300 minimum. The February 2025 guide put early repayment charges at 3% for the first five years on variable rates and 5/4/3/2/1 across a five-year fix, with a 10% annual overpayment allowance; the 2025 tariff now defers to your offer letter, so those numbers are a guide rather than a promise.

The clause nobody mentions sits on a separate page called fixed rate break costs. Allica says the early repayment charge “will be the only charge to repay the loan early” in most situations, but a swap breakage charge applies on top where you repay early or overpay beyond the allowance and swap market rates have fallen since you agreed the loan. Comparison pages quote the 5/4/3/2/1 and stop. If there is a realistic chance of selling the property inside the fixed period, that second charge is the one to ask about.

The 0.50% you only keep if you move your banking

The April 2026 guide lists three discounts. The largest is 0.50% for opening an Allica current account and running 50% of annual turnover through it for the first five years. There is 0.25% for an EPC rating of A to C or a loan above £750,000, and another 0.25% on investment cases where debt service cover exceeds 200%. They combine, and they apply to fixed and variable pricing alike.

What makes the first one different from a normal loyalty discount is that Allica has already applied it to the headline. Every rate in the table is quoted inclusive of the 0.50%. So the owner-occupied semi-commercial borrower who will not move banking is looking at 6.50% fixed, not 6.00%, and 2.30% over Base Rate, not 1.80%. On a £1m loan that is £5,000 a year, every year, and it is a condition that has to keep being met rather than a box ticked at completion.

Our position on this, since a page like this should take one: the condition is fair and Allica is open about it, but publishing the discounted number as the headline makes the range look sharper than it is against banks that quote gross. If you are running Allica against Shawbrook or Redwood, add the half point back before you draw any conclusion, then decide whether moving the current account is something the business would have done anyway.

Who gets approved, and who is quietly excluded

Allica takes a “Limited Company or LLP registered at Companies House, or a partnership or sole trader that operates in England, Scotland or Wales” for commercial mortgages and asset finance, with two full years of financial accounts. Sole traders are in for property and asset lending. They are out for the unsecured business loan, where Allica states that “only limited companies and limited liability partnerships” may apply, three years of filed accounts are needed, and evidence of 150% debt service cover is required. The overdraft asks for 24 months of trading, turnover above £300,000 and profitability. Growth finance wants two years of accounts and turnover of at least £5m.

New SPVs are the grey area. The commercial mortgages page says newly incorporated special purpose vehicles are considered case by case, while the mandatory document checklist asks for two years of accounts and states that it “excludes newly formed SPV's”. Both are Allica's wording. In practice the case gets made on the directors' track record, so a first-time investor buying through a company formed last month is unlikely to fit.

The sector LTV table is the most useful page in the guide. Standard investment sits at 75% for semi-commercial, offices, retail, industrial, warehouses and holiday lets, with 80% on some owner-occupied variants, 70% for takeaways, 60% for student accommodation and 75% for houses in multiple occupation. Trading assets are tighter: restaurants and pubs 70%, guest houses and bed and breakfasts 70%, leisure 70% falling to 60% on a vacant possession basis. An extra 5% LTV is available to owner-occupiers in accountancy, veterinary, architecture and surveying, manufacturing, machining and storage or distribution. Hotels are the outlier, with branded hotels above £1.5m reaching 100% of vacant possession value, and a personal guarantee required for any amount above 70% of that value. On the unsecured business loan, a director's personal guarantee is standard rather than conditional.

Two underwriting details decide more investment cases than the rate does. Debt service cover is 130% on commercial and 120% on semi-commercial, measured at pay rate for a fixed rate and pay rate plus 2% for a variable one, so a variable case has to clear a bar two points higher than the rate it pays. And gross rent is only used where the borrower can evidence three months of loan repayments in cash and one director holds an Experian consumer score of 881 or better with a supporting personal guarantee. Otherwise Allica works on gross rent less 10%, and always gross rent less 25% on an HMO. A case that stacks on gross rent and fails on net is the most common way an Allica investment enquiry dies.

Where the marketing and the documents disagree

Three small things, none of them scandalous, all of them the sort of gap that a borrower should know about before quoting Allica back to itself.

The commercial mortgages page carries a line about an offer inside seven days. That line sits inside a customer testimonial, not in a service standard, and Allica does not publish a decision or offer service level for commercial mortgages anywhere we could find. It does publish one for business loans: a decision “no later than the next working day” and money as fast, if the documents arrived first time. Bridging carries a term sheet within four hours in the 2025 guide, which is a term sheet rather than an offer and certainly not funds.

The awards claim contradicts itself. The business loans page says Allica was named Best Business Finance Provider at the British Bank Awards “five years in a row”. The results release of 15 April 2026 says “for fourth year running”. Both are Allica pages, which means one is stale, and we have no way of telling which.

The lending numbers need care rather than correction. “We've lent over £4 billion to established businesses since 2019” is cumulative advances. The £3.7bn in the results is the balance outstanding at the end of 2025. Both are true and they measure different things.

Trustpilot, for what it is worth on a bank whose reviewers are mostly savers: 4.6 out of 5 from 1,878 reviews with 83% at five stars, read on 7 September 2026.