Time Finance review UK 2026: a live takeover, and soft asset finance due to be withdrawn

The takeover, stage by stage, and what is not settled yet

The offer period opened at 07:00 on 17 August 2026 with a Rule 2.7 announcement. Bentley Park (UK) Limited, parent of Ultimate Finance Group Limited and part of the Tavistock Group, described as an international private investment firm, is offering 59.1p in cash for each Time Finance share. That is a premium of about 12.6% to the 52.50p closing price on 14 August 2026 and values the company at roughly £55.13m fully diluted. The structure is a court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act 2006, with the right to switch to a contractual takeover offer.

Three conditions still have to be met: 75% by value of scheme shareholders voting in favour, sanction by the court, and “the receipt of FCA approval of the change in control of certain regulated entities within the Time Finance Group”. Irrevocable undertakings covering about 47.36% of the issued share capital have been given, including by directors and by Arena Investors, GPIM Limited and Ron Russell, according to trade reporting. The scheme document was published in early September 2026 and the court meeting and general meeting are listed for 1 October 2026 at Simmons & Simmons in London, with proxies due on 29 September. Completion is expected during the fourth quarter of 2026. No competing offeror had been disclosed as at 17 August 2026.

Combined, the two lending books come to nearly £650m: Ultimate Finance at about £430m and Time Finance at about £218m net, measured at 30 June 2026. That is the logic of the deal from the buyer's side. From a borrower's side the point is narrower. Sign with Time Finance today and you contract with a Time Finance group company on the terms in front of you; nothing in the announcement says existing agreements change. What changes is who owns the lender, and what it will write next year.

Soft asset finance is being withdrawn

The Rule 2.7 announcement states that Time Finance will stop offering new soft asset financing products shortly after the scheme becomes effective. Existing customers continue to be served and the approved pipeline is honoured, so this is a decision about new business rather than a withdrawal from agreements already written.

Time Finance lists its soft assets as office furniture, commercial kitchens, software, shop fit-outs, and audio visual and IT hardware. A restaurant fitting out a kitchen, a dental practice buying software or an office taking on furniture and screens is buying precisely the category that is closing. If that is your purchase and you want Time Finance to fund it, the window is the period before completion and the pipeline that is approved by then, which on the published timetable means a decision made in the coming weeks rather than next spring.

Two other consequences are named in the same announcement. Bentley Park intends to move Time Finance's registered office to Bradley Stoke in Bristol, away from the Bath address on every current document, and a review “may result in a reduction to the Combined Group's office footprint”. On people: “Some workforce reduction and operational restructuring will likely be required”, and any headcount reductions “could be material in the context of Time Finance's workforce”. Time Finance currently operates from Bath, Reading, Manchester and Warrington. A borrower does not lose anything contractual from that, but the account manager who wrote your deal may not be there in a year, and service is worth asking about.

For soft assets we are pointing businesses at Novuna, which names technology and EPOS equipment on its own pages, and Simply Asset Finance, which lists soft assets and shop fit-outs.

What Time Finance funds today

Hire purchase and finance lease are the two asset finance structures. Hire purchase agreements “typically include an initial deposit, fixed monthly repayments and a final payment to complete ownership of the asset”. On a finance lease, businesses “rent the asset over a fixed term… At the end of the lease period, the asset is returned or a new agreement can be arranged”, and such agreements “do not usually include ownership of the asset at the end of the term”. There is no operating lease. New and used equipment is funded, with no age cap published.

Alongside asset finance sit invoice finance, loans, vehicle finance and a multi-product proposition. The hard asset list runs to construction, printing equipment, manufacturing and engineering machinery, tractor units, trailers and light commercials, agricultural and forestry equipment, cars and vans. Time Finance says it supports “sole traders, SMEs or growing businesses”.

Distribution is broker-led for asset finance. The site says it works with brokers across the UK, and specifically with “a select panel of Asset Finance brokers”. Direct enquiry forms exist, but every route described on the asset finance page runs through an intermediary, and the process is set out plainly: proposal submitted, underwritten, documentation issued, signed documents returned, Time buys the equipment, the client repays monthly. Worth knowing too that Time Finance acts as a broker itself on vehicle finance and where its own book is not the right home, so an introduced client can end up funded by somebody else entirely.

The Growth Guarantee Scheme page, and the only guarantee wording in this group

Time Finance's Growth Guarantee Scheme page is the most informative document any of these five lenders publishes, because a government scheme forces disclosure that ordinary product pages avoid. Facilities run “from three months up to six years” for term loans and asset finance. The maximum is “generally £2m per business group”, and minimum facility sizes start “at £1,000 for asset finance, invoice finance and asset-based lending and £25,001 for term loans and overdrafts”. That £1,000 floor is the lowest published entry point in this group by a distance.

On security the page says: “Personal guarantees can be taken at Time Finance's discretion, in line with our normal commercial lending practices. Taking security over Principle Private Residences is strictly prohibited within the Scheme though.” That is the only personal guarantee wording published by any lender in this group, and it applies inside the scheme rather than across the whole product range. Note what it does and does not promise: a guarantee may still be requested, but the family home cannot be security for a scheme facility.

The guarantee itself is often misunderstood, and the page corrects it: the scheme “provides the lender with a 70% government-backed guarantee against the outstanding balance… The borrower always remains 100% liable for the debit”, spelling error included. Eligibility runs to businesses with turnover up to £45m on a group basis, with banks, building societies, insurers and reinsurers other than insurance brokers, public sector bodies, state-funded schools and primary extraction of coal, lignite, crude petroleum and natural gas excluded. Pricing is still not published: “Interest rates and fees charged by lenders will vary and will depend on the specific lending proposal.”

The FRN question, and three different versions of how big it is

No firm reference number for Time Finance plc appears anywhere on its own website. The homepage footer carries the company name, the Bath address and company number 05845866, with no FCA wording at all. The terms and conditions page says “Time Finance plc is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority” with no number, on a page whose own text says it was last updated on 7 December 2020. The only FRN published is on the vehicle finance page and belongs to a different company: “Time Vendor Finance Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, under firm reference number 628891, for consumer credit activities”, company number 2112280. The same footer adds that “Vehicle Leasing to limited companies is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority”.

We do not publish an FRN for Time Finance plc because it does not publish one itself, and we are not going to attach a consumer credit permission belonging to a subsidiary to the parent. As a practical matter, lending to a limited company against equipment does not require consumer credit permissions, and the group plainly holds regulated entities, since the takeover is conditional on FCA approval of a change in control over them. Check which company is named in your documents: the group includes Time Hard Asset Finance Ltd (05834586, formerly Bradgate Business Finance), Time Broker Finance Ltd (03681755), Time Invoice Finance Ltd (06263602) and Time Commercial Finance Ltd (10269062).

Scale claims are inconsistent too. The FAQ says “Since our launch in 1998, the business has grown rapidly providing £175million of funding annually to 11,000 UK businesses”. The about page gives June 2025 figures: lending over £217m and arranging over £96m of new funding in the year to May 2025. The intermediaries page refers to over 10,000 UK customers a year. Three numbers, one site. The 1998 date does not match the plc either: Time Finance plc was incorporated on 14 June 2006 as 1PM PLC and renamed on 6 December 2020. A 1998 incorporation belongs to Time Broker Finance Limited, company number 03681755, which is a different company. Meanwhile the RNS of 9 June 2026 reports a gross lending book of £250.9m at 31 May 2026 against £217.4m a year earlier, so the about page is more than a year out of date.

How the business has actually been trading

The 9 June 2026 RNS confirms a gross lending book reaching £250m, “an all-time high record level”, from £217m at 31 May 2025. Trade reporting of the same trading update puts revenue up 4% to £38.5m, profit before tax up 6% to £8.4m, own-book origination up 26% to £122m and a twentieth consecutive quarter of book growth. Those revenue and profit figures come from press coverage rather than an announcement we read directly, and the audited results for the year to 31 May 2026 were due on 23 September 2026, after this page was written.

The mix is the interesting part. Invoice finance and the hard element of asset finance accounted for over 95% of new lending volume originated in the year and now make up over 89% of the total book, with secured lending at 87% against 77% two years earlier, again from trade reporting. A business that has already shifted almost entirely towards secured hard lending is a business for which withdrawing from soft assets is a small step, which makes the announcement read as a continuation rather than a surprise.

On service, Time Finance holds a Trustpilot score of 4.7 out of 5 from 200 reviews, 53 of them in the twelve months to 7 September 2026, with 90% at five stars and 5% at one. The profile notes that the company has not replied to negative reviews. Two hundred reviews is a modest sample for a lender with a book of this size, and it is still the second largest review base in this group. Ed Rimmer has been chief executive since June 2021, with Steve Nichols as managing director for asset finance.