The UK SME lending panel, 2026

What 200 lenders across 1,877 products will and will not accept, counted from our own broker platform in September 2026. Every figure below is our own data rather than a published market statistic, and none of it exists anywhere else.

Alex BeardsleyFounder & Director

|Updated September 2026

What this is, and what it is not

Most research in this market recycles the same handful of published sources. This does not. It is a census of the lending criteria on one broker panel: which lenders will look at a company trading under a year, which will fund a scaffolding yard, which cover Northern Ireland, and what the products actually price at. The counts come from a platform extract taken in September 2026, filtered to products that were available rather than withdrawn, and normalised so that a lender running three programmes counts once.

Two limits worth stating plainly. This is one panel, not the whole UK market, so it understates lenders we do not hold and says nothing about those we do not see. And a criterion is a stated appetite rather than a promise: every lender still underwrites the case in front of it, and a business that fits on paper can be declined on the facts. The figures describe who might look, not who will say yes.

Naming or counting a lender here is a statement about panel composition. It implies no endorsement, affiliation or approval either way, and panel composition changes between pulls. Anyone is welcome to quote these figures with a link back to this page.

The shape of the panel

The first thing the shape shows is that property lending is where the competition is. Bridging and development carry 53 and 51 lenders between them, against 20 in invoice finance and 19 in secured term lending. A borrower with a property to work with has several times the choice of one without, which is the practical reason bridging solves problems that look like term-loan problems.

Finding one: adverse credit is a product question, not a credit question

The counts move far more with the product than with the borrower. On unsecured lending, 24 of 55 lenders (44%) accept defaults or judgments settled or older than 24 months, and only 8 (15%) will look at repeated recent ones. On bridging, 42 of 53 lenders (79%) accept light adverse and 19 (36%) accept heavy adverse.

Read those two together. More lenders will accept heavy adverse credit on a bridge (19) than will accept recent repeated adverse credit on an unsecured loan (8). The credit file has not changed; the security has. A business told its credit history rules out borrowing has usually been told that about one product.

Asset finance sits in between, at 14 lenders for business adverse credit and 19 for a loss-making year. Invoice finance is the strictest on the borrower and the most forgiving on age, because it underwrites the customer: 8 accept minor adverse, but 12 will consider a phoenix company.

Finding two: for a start-up, invoice finance is the open door

The conventional order has invoice finance as a facility for established businesses and unsecured loans as the accessible one. The panel says the reverse. 14 of 20 invoice finance lenders (70%) will consider a genuine start-up, against 5 of 55 unsecured lenders (9%).

The reason is whose credit is being assessed. An invoice finance lender is underwriting the businesses that owe you money, and their payment record exists whether or not yours does. A start-up with two solid corporate customers is a better invoice finance risk than a three-year-old company selling to consumers, and the criteria reflect that even though almost nothing written for small businesses does.

Under a year of trading, rather than day one, the unsecured picture improves to 21 lenders (38%), and invoice finance to 15.

Finding three: the homeowner test nobody publishes

39 of 55 unsecured lenders will proceed where the guaranteeing director does not own a home, which means 16 (29%) effectively require one. In invoice finance the figure is 17 of 20.

This is rarely stated on a lender's website and almost never in a comparison table, because it is a criterion about the guarantor rather than the business. For a director who rents, it removes roughly three lenders in ten before anything else is assessed, and it is the most common invisible reason a case that looked fine comes back declined.

Finding four: Northern Ireland is a different market

Coverage in Wales is effectively identical to England across every category. Scotland loses a slice. Northern Ireland loses most of the panel.

Development finance is the sharpest example: 7 of 51 lenders cover Northern Ireland, 14% of the panel, against 29 for Scotland. A Northern Irish developer is not competing for the same money as a developer in Leeds, and no national average captures that.

Finding five: in asset finance, the asset decides, not the accounts

Across 38 asset finance lenders, appetite by asset class spans a factor of 5.5, from 33 lenders for construction plant to 6 for marine.

The line that separates the top of that table from the bottom is resale. A digger has a deep second-hand market, an auction price and a serial number, so a lender can model recovery. A gym fit-out has none of those. That is why soft assets attract larger deposits and shorter terms rather than simply higher rates, and why the accounts matter less here than borrowers expect.

Three transaction features narrow the list further: 10 lenders will fund a purchase from a private seller rather than a dealer, 15 will consider older machinery, and 25 offer some form of VAT deferral.

Finding six: on commercial property, the sector sets the deposit

Across 45 commercial mortgage lenders, appetite by property type spans a factor of 5.1.

A thin lender list is felt as a larger deposit rather than a refusal, because fewer lenders means less competition on terms. Landlord experience is a separate gate: 21 lenders will consider a borrower with none, so a first commercial investment purchase is placeable but narrower than the headline count suggests.

Finding seven: a “rates from” headline describes a range two to four times wide

The ceiling is 2.5 times the floor on commercial mortgages, 3.9 times on buy-to-let and 2.6 times on development. An advertised rate quotes the floor, which by definition almost nobody receives. The median is the more honest headline, and it is the figure this panel publishes alongside every span.

Spans are facts about panel products on a stated date, cleaned of implausible outliers. They are never an offer, a quote or a rate any particular business will be given, and pricing is set case by case by the lender.

The rest of the census

Bridging

35 lenders will fund heavy refurbishment, 33 will re-bridge an existing facility, 26 will accept an automated valuation on suitable security, 23 will lend against value rather than the price paid, 22 will take a second charge and 16 will lend on land with planning.

Buy-to-let

26 lenders cover HMOs and 25 multi-unit freehold blocks, 24 will take a first-time landlord, 20 lend on holiday lets, 14 on expat applications and 9 on foreign nationals.

Development

16 lenders will consider a first-time developer and 27 will lend against planning gain. Maximum loan to cost spans 60% to 100%, and maximum loan to gross development value 55% to 80%.

Sources

Every count and span above is our own, from the platform extract dated in the method section. The published sources below are where the surrounding market and regulatory picture can be checked, and where a reader can verify any firm we name.

1. BVA BDRC, SME Finance Monitor
2. British Business Bank, Small Business Finance Markets
3. UK Finance, invoice finance and asset-based lending
4. Finance & Leasing Association, asset finance statistics
5. FCA Register: verify any lender, broker or principal firm
6. Companies House: the company behind a lender’s trading name

Citing this research

Quote any figure on this page with a link back to it. The suggested citation is: CapExpand, The UK SME Lending Panel 2026, September 2026. Journalists and researchers who want a specific cut of the data, or the underlying category breakdowns, can ask through the contact page. The panel is re-pulled quarterly and this page is rewritten from the new extract rather than edited, so the figures always describe a single dated census.

Every lender named on the panel is listed by product category on our lender directory, and the per-category criteria sit on the product guides: bridging, development, asset finance, invoice finance and commercial mortgages.