Business Loans

Find a Business Loan

Whether you're planning to invest in new equipment or software that can power your business's future growth; you'd like a business loan to help cover the cost of your business expenses until a key client pays their invoice; or you simply need a small business loan to bolster your business's cashflow in the short term, it's a good idea to compare loans from a range of different business loan specialists before you sign on that dotted line.

What can I use a business loan for?

In most cases you can use your business loan for almost anything your business needs to start up, operate or grow. For instance, business loans can be used to purchase equipment or tools for your business, to buy or lease business premises, to hire additional staff or to purchase raw materials or finished goods for resale.

How much can my business borrow?

The size of the business loan you can take out will depend on a wide range of different factors, not least of which is the particular lender you decide to go with because each lender has its own lending criteria.

Beyond the business loan company's own minimum and maximum loan amounts, though, a range of factors relating to your own business will also influence how much your business can borrow.

For example, your business's trading history, annual revenue and business expenses will affect how much you can borrow, and how you plan to use the business loan will also play a role as well.

In addition, lenders will run credit checks on your business, and some will also run individual credit checks on business owners or directors, both of which can affect the lender's decision when it comes to how much you can borrow.

What credit score do I need to have in order to qualify for a business loan?

There's no predetermined credit score that you must have in order to qualify for a business loan. In fact, when lenders run credit checks it isn't actually the credit score they're interested in at all - it's the history of repayments, details or any missed payments or CCJs, and amount of debt currently outstanding that those credit checks will show that lenders will use as the basis for their decision making.

If I have a poor credit history can I still take out a business loan?

Yes, it's often still possible to find a suitable business loan even if you have some negative factors in your credit history, such as missed or late repayments on previous loans or exceeding the credit limit on credit cards.

However, a bad credit history will reduce the number of lenders that will lend to you, so it's even more important to compare different business loan specialists if you do have any of these negative factors in your credit report.

What is the difference between a secured and an unsecured business loan?

As with personal loans, when you're taking out a business loan you can either use an asset that is owned by the business as security against the debt, in which case you'd be taking out a secured business loan, or you can choose not to offer any assets as security, in which case you're taking out an unsecured business loan.

Since secured business loans are lower risk for the lender they sometimes have slightly lower interest rates, and in some cases may also be a little easier to qualify for.

How soon will I receive the business loan?

That will depend on the lender you decide to go with, but many lenders will be able to offer a same-day loan decision with the funds deposited into your business account with 24 to 48 hours.

Of course, the timing will also be influenced by how quickly you're able to supply the lender with the documents it might require to make its lending decision, such as financial statements, tax returns, business bank account statements and proof of ID for business owners or directors. Any delay with sending these documents to the lender will obvious delay the loan decision too.