Ultimate Finance review 2026: invoice, asset and bridging, and the Time Finance deal

Who owns Ultimate Finance

The lender is Ultimate Finance Group Limited, Companies House 04350565, incorporated on 10 January 2002, registered at First Floor, Equinox North, Great Park Road, Bradley Stoke, Bristol BS32 4QL. Its filed classification is factoring, which is a fair description of where it started. The immediate parent is Bentley Park (UK) Limited (09515595), at the same Bristol address, recorded at Companies House as a person with significant control since 14 June 2017.

The homepage describes Ultimate Finance as “an independent lender, backed by international private investment organisation, the Tavistock Group”, and the FY2025 accounts refer to “our shareholder, Tavistock Group”. Those same accounts place control with two named individuals by virtue of their roles in the UK trust that ultimately owns Bentley Park. The going concern statement is candid about the arrangement: the group is reliant on support from Bentley Park and from Lakeland Cove Limited, an entity controlled by the ultimate shareholder, both of which provide funding. The basis was adopted without a material uncertainty being flagged.

The numbers behind it, from the group accounts to 31 December 2025 filed on 23 July 2026: revenue of £53,780k, up 1% on the year, statutory profit before tax of £8,011k and profit after tax of £6,125k, on gross loans and receivables of £390,758k against £321,187k a year earlier. Group headcount averaged 155. The directors also report a different measure, profit before tax and inter-group interest, at £13,429k; that is their own key performance indicator, not the statutory figure, and the two should not be confused. Those figures came from a scanned filing read by OCR, so take them as reported in the accounts rather than to the penny.

The Time Finance deal, and the silence around it

On 17 August 2026 a recommended cash acquisition of Time Finance plc was announced at 59.1p per share, valuing it at approximately £55.13m on a fully diluted basis and representing a 12.6% premium to the 52.5p closing price on 14 August. The structure is a court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act 2006. Conditions include shareholder approval, court sanction and FCA approval of the change in control of certain regulated entities. Irrevocable undertakings were given over 43,821,878 shares, about 47.36% of Time Finance's issued ordinary share capital, and the scheme is expected to become effective in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Two details get reported wrongly elsewhere, so we will be precise. First, the bidder is Bentley Park (UK) Limited, the parent company of Ultimate Finance Group Limited, not Ultimate Finance itself. Second, the deal is agreed and not completed. The announcement puts the combined net loan book at nearly £650m based on the two companies' unaudited books at 30 June 2026, and that combination only exists once the scheme becomes effective.

What surprised us is that Ultimate Finance has published nothing about it. Its own page sitemap runs to 453 URLs and contains no news item mentioning Time Finance or Bentley Park, with the most recent items dated 11 August 2026 and earlier. A borrower reading only the lender's website in September 2026 would have no idea that its ownership group is in the middle of acquiring a listed competitor. We would rather you heard it here than after signing.

Invoice finance and the working capital range

Invoice finance is the core. Facilities run up to £10m against up to 95% of unpaid invoice value on a revolving basis, with an optional cashflow loan of up to £500,000 over a term of up to five years bolted on top. Confidentiality, credit control and bad debt protection are all optional extras rather than defaults, and the FAQ is honest that the facility is disclosed unless you pay for confidentiality: “Yes, your customers will know about the facility. However, we do offer a confidential option.”

Three sector variants sit alongside it. Construction finance goes to £2m on a rolling contract, which matters because applications and retentions are the reason most invoice financiers will not touch construction. Recruitment finance goes to £10m with the same £500k cashflow loan option and access to RSM's pay and bill services. Trade finance goes to £1m with up to 120 days of trade credit. Structured finance, up to £10m, combines receivables, plant and machinery and property with cashflow loans in one facility.

Eligibility on invoice finance is wider than most of this tranche. Ultimate Finance says it will look at “any UK business that sells to other businesses on credit, whether they're a limited company, a sole trader or a partnership”. No minimum trading history, minimum turnover or sector exclusion list is published anywhere on the site. Facility set-up is claimed within one week, with funds paid within 24 hours of receiving invoices after that. In the first half of 2026 the average working capital facility size was £679,000, up from around £500,000 a year earlier, which tells you the size of client this business is winning.

Asset finance and bridging, where the numbers are published

Asset finance is defined tightly and in the lender's own words: “Non-regulated facilities only to any UK registered or domiciled business. Minimum facility size: £10,000 (Ltd company) or £25,000 (non-limited). Maximum facility size: £750,000 for a single asset and £3m for a single customer. Balloon payment up to £150k. Cars funded up to £200k (including VAT). Term from 12 months to 84 months.” Repayments are fixed, a set-up fee and an option-to-purchase fee apply, and the security is the asset being financed. The maximum was raised to £3m during 2026.

Read the non-limited minimum twice if you are a sole trader. A limited company can take a £10,000 asset facility; a sole trader cannot take anything below £25,000. A sole trader wanting £15,000 for a machine is not eligible here, and that is a criterion, not a judgement call at underwriting.

Bridging is the product where Ultimate Finance publishes most. Funding from £100,000 to £4m, duration of 1 to 18 months, up to 75% loan to value, and up to 100% of the purchase price on below-market-value purchases. Interest rates are published from 0.74% a month on residential bridges up to 65% LTV and 0.79% up to 75%, retained or serviced. The residential criteria table adds valuation and conveyancing costs, a 2% arrangement fee and no exit fee. It must be for a business purpose, and it covers England, Wales and Scotland. A semi-commercial bridging loan was added during 2026 and rates on development exit were reduced in August 2026.

Speed claims are consistent across the range: a decision in principle on bridging within 24 hours, asset finance usually in place within 24 hours or one working day, and invoice finance set up within a week.

What is not published

Invoice finance pricing is described but never quantified. The FAQ says: “We charge an ongoing service fee for the management of your ledger, and a discount fee (like an interest rate) for the cash we advance. Our fees are always competitively priced and totally transparent.” Transparent would be a number. In fairness, almost nobody in invoice finance publishes one, because the price depends on ledger quality, debtor concentration and volume, but a business comparing facilities should ask for both fees expressed in pounds on its own projected turnover rather than as percentages.

Nothing on the public site tells a borrower whether a personal guarantee or a debenture is required on any product. No minimum trading history, minimum turnover, homeowner test or sector exclusion list appears either. That is a lot of silence for a lender whose asset finance and bridging criteria are otherwise published in detail, and it means the security question has to be asked at the first conversation.

On regulation, no FCA statement and no firm reference number appear on the site. The legals page identifies the company and its number only. The complaints page routes escalation to trade bodies rather than the ombudsman: UK Finance for invoice finance, the Finance and Leasing Association for asset finance, and a promise that after 12 weeks a final response will explain “how to escalate it further with the appropriate regulatory body”. For an unregulated business facility there is no Financial Ombudsman Service right, and the page does not say so in those words. We would not read anything sinister into it. Most business lending sits outside the perimeter, and the FCA change-of-control condition in the Time Finance deal relates to Time Finance's regulated entities, not to Ultimate Finance's status.

Scale, funding and reviews

Ultimate Finance ended 2025 with a record £393m loan book, up 24%, after £250m of new facilities split £89m each in asset finance and bridging and £72m in working capital. Six months later the book was £430m, up 21% year on year, after a record £153m of new facilities in the first half of 2026, split at 30 June between working capital at £165m, asset finance at £165m and bridging at £100m. The company says it has lent over £19bn to date and reports a net promoter score of 79.

That growth is externally funded rather than retained. Statutory profit after tax was £6.1m on revenue of £53.8m while gross loans and receivables grew by roughly £70m, which is the arithmetic of a lender using wholesale facilities and shareholder support to expand. The FY2025 accounts record that a subsidiary increased its committed securitisation facility with Lloyds Bank Plc to £130m in 2026, and a separate news item refers to £370m of institutional funding facilities.

On reviews we are going to be unhelpful on purpose. Ultimate Finance's own FAQ says “our clients and Introducers have consistently awarded us the industry leading score of 4.9 out of 5 on Trustpilot”. That is the lender's claim about itself. We could not read the Trustpilot profile directly, the review counts we saw did not agree with each other, and a score without a verified count and date is not something we will republish as fact.