Business finance in the United Kingdom
Three separate tests decide where a UK business borrower stands, and they are decided in a fixed order. This page puts them in that order and points at the tool or the guide that settles each one.
Everything on this site that applies in the United Kingdom is collected here. Nothing on this page is a new claim: each figure is quoted and dated on the guide it links to, and how the figures are produced sets out the rule they were gathered under.
Start with the perimeter, not with the lender
Whether the Financial Conduct Authority regulates your borrowing is settled by four things: what the borrower is, how much the credit is, what the money is for, and what the lender has taken security over. It is not settled by whether the deal feels like a consumer one, and it is not settled by whether the firm is authorized — authorization is at firm level, not product level.
Run the four tests
The perimeter checker asks the six questions the statutes turn on and quotes the article behind each answer, including the case where a charge over your home changes the result.
Open the UK perimeter checkerThe short version: consumer-credit rules reach sole traders and small partnerships borrowing £25,000 or less, and the individuals who guarantee that borrowing. A limited-company facility and the director's guarantee behind it sit outside. Above £25,000 the exclusion also needs the money to be wholly or predominantly for business purposes, which is what the declaration you are asked to sign is there to establish. Are business loans regulated? works through the line itself.
Outside the perimeter is not the same as no complaint route
This is the correction most worth making, and it is the one lenders and brokers get wrong most often. The ombudsman publishes its own eligibility test, and it is separate from the perimeter: a size test for the business, and for a personal guarantor a date test — the guarantee has to have been given on or after 1 April 2019. On the service's own reading, roughly 99% of UK small businesses meet one of the size tests.
So there are three questions, not one, and they can come out differently:
| Question | What decides it |
|---|---|
| Do the consumer-credit rules apply to the agreement? | Borrower type, amount, purpose, security |
| Can the business complain to the ombudsman? | Turnover, balance sheet or headcount |
| Can the guarantor complain to the ombudsman? | The date the guarantee was given |
If a lender tells you that being outside the perimeter means there is nowhere to go, ask which of the three they mean, in writing.
What a guarantee actually does here
A personal guarantee does not move the company's debt onto you. It creates a second, personal contract, and three clauses decide how large that contract can get. The FCA has already been asked about this — the Federation of Small Businesses' super-complaint — and its answer describes a program of work, not a rule constraining what you can be asked to sign today. What a personal guarantee actually does sets out the clauses to read before you initial the page.
The two UK prices that are published in full
Most UK business lenders publish a range and quote you a number afterwards. Two do better, and both are on this site:
The Start Up Loan at 7.5% fixed
Rate, term, fees and early repayment all published on one page. The number that decides whether it suits you is not the rate — it is the product type, because this is a personal loan rather than a loan to your company.
Who the government guarantee protects
The Growth Guarantee Scheme covers the lender for 70% of the balance. Your liability is unchanged at 100%. The British Business Bank says so in one sentence.
What is not a UK question
Three things on this site are the same whichever country you borrow in, because they are arithmetic and negotiation rather than regulation:
- Where the money goes — the five places a facility takes money, only one of which is the rate.
- The cost tool — turns a term loan, a fixed-cost advance or a revenue-share facility into one comparable number, in your browser.
- Six questions to put to a lender in writing — if the answer is not in the facility letter, it is not an answer.
Borrowing in the United States instead? The tests are different and the disclosure rules are state law: start on the US page.
What changed on this page
7 September 2026 New — A UK perimeter checker was added. Six articles of the Regulated Activities Order were read in the original rather than in a summary: 60B(3) and 60L, under which a partnership of four or more members, an LLP or a company is not a borrower under a credit agreement at all; 60C(3), under which a business-purpose facility falls outside only when it exceeds £25,000, so a facility of exactly £25,000 is inside; 60C(5) and (6), under which a declaration of business purpose creates a presumption; and 61(3)(a) with 61A on mortgages. The checker answers whether the FCA perimeter reaches a facility, and answers separately whether the Financial Ombudsman Service could look at a complaint about it, because those are two questions with two different tests.
7 September 2026 New — The guides now have a UK page and a US page, and the navigation carries them instead of the two checkers, which are one click from either. Neither page states anything that is not already stated, quoted and dated on the page it links to.