How to get a business loan
Applying for a business loan for the first time can be hard: what do you need to do to get approved, who are the best lenders, and how long should the process take.
Here is a quick guide to help you understand the loan application process, and find out what you need to do to secure the best deal.
24 hours to get a decision
No fees for repaying early
Top-ups available
How to prepare your loan application
Check your credit score
To start, review your personal and business credit score. Your credit score is something all lenders look at. We’d recommend checking your credit score on Equifax and Experian. Sometimes there is an old invoice that hasn’t been sorted out which could delay your funds.
What is a good credit score and how much you could get with it?
Experian wrote a piece on this, explaining that a score over 80 (on a range of 0 to 100) is excellent, and allows you to access better deals for your business. If your business credit score is lower than that, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply. We might ask for more documents though, to make the best decision on the amount and interest rate we’ll offer you.
If you think your credit score is currently too low to get a good deal out of it, you can try to improve your business credit score.
How much you can borrow and what for
When you apply, we don’t ask for detailed business plans or financial forecasts. In some situations, however, knowing how and why you will use the funds might help us to make a decision. It will also help you estimate the amount of money you’d need to get things going.
If you know exactly how much you need, it will be easier to estimate the costs of borrowing and repayment plans. If you need support, feel free to use our business loan calculator. It should give a rough estimate of your monthly payment.
You should bear in mind we are typically able to offer up to 10% of your annual revenue, in the limit of £1,000,000.
Settle your debts if you can
Having a healthy cash flow is also beneficial when applying for a business loan. Consider contacting any customers or clients who owe you payments and encourage them to settle their debts. This will improve your cash flow and demonstrate that you have a strong ability to manage your finances.
Before starting your loan application, it may also be helpful to explore options for consolidating your own business debt. Consolidating debt will streamline your financial obligations and make it easier to manage repayments, and may further strengthen your loan application.
Apply for a business loan
Apply online
Enter the amount you’d like to get and give your business email address. We’ll use it to create your account and send information on your loan application.
Tell us about yourself
Answer some questions about yourself and your business (creation date, annual turnover, etc.). This will take roughly 5 minutes.
We give you an answer
We’ll run a credit check based on the information you provided, to inform our decision. The time it takes us to make a decision may vary depending on the amount you ask for. For example, if you ask for £15,000 you’ll get a decision in no more than 60 seconds. If you ask for £1,000,000 your application will go through a thorough process so it might take a bit longer - you should hear from us within 24 hours.
We approve your loan application: what's next?
Once we make you an offer, you’ll have a few last steps to go through before we send the money to your account, you should:
- Add your bank details in your account: we’ll send the funds to this account
- Complete an online identity check
- Add details of your company’s directors and major shareholders (Name, date of birth and address)
- Link a debit card that we’ll use for the monthly repayments
- Read and sign the online Credit Agreement and Personal Guarantee. Feel free to seek independent legal advice before signing this guarantee. You can read more on what is a personal guarantee here to help you understand what it is.
Finally, feel free to reach out online or on the phone so that your account manager can assist in any way.
97% of our customers are satisfied: be the next one
Questions? We're here to help
Call us at 020 3778 0274 from Monday to Friday (9am - 6pm). We can take your business loan application over the phone, or answer your questions about applying online.
We keep our prices simple
We’ll only charge interest on your outstanding balance for the days you’re using your business loan – no early repayment fees, no long-term commitments. Our business loan rates start at 2% a month for a Flexi-Loan, depending on your business.
6 monthly repayments of £1,120
Total repayment of £31,685(3.33% interest rate per 30 days)
This loan calculator is only an example, your actual rate for your business loan will vary based on your circumstances. Here’s another example: if you borrowed £10,000 for 12 months at 49% representative APR, with an interest rate of 40% p.a. (variable), then, all in all, the total amount you’d repay would be £12,294.
The iwoca story
Over the past eleven years iwoca has grown from an ambitious fintech start-up to one of the fastest-growing and biggest business lenders in Europe. Now we're a team of around 400 in London, Leeds and Frankfurt working towards the goal of funding one million small businesses.
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