UK Business Lending Terms Index 2026
Edition 1, June 2026. Updated each cycle. Every figure is computed from our Lender Index.
Only 32% of UK business loan lenders let you check your eligibility with a soft search, 61% are FCA regulated, and 45% lend to limited companies only. The UK Business Lending Terms Index measures the terms that actually decide whether a business can borrow, across the 110 lenders we track, and is updated each cycle. We report rates as a range, not a single average, because lenders price on different bases.
Just 32% of the 110 UK business lenders we track let you check eligibility with a soft search. The rest can leave a footprint on your credit file at the quote stage.
Headline findings
of UK business loan lenders let you check eligibility with a soft search, so the other two thirds can leave a footprint on your credit file at the quote stage.
of UK business loan lenders are FCA regulated (business lending to limited companies often sits outside FCA regulation).
of UK business loan lenders lend to limited companies only, ruling out sole traders.
of UK business loan lenders is the range of published rates, from secured short-term finance to unsecured term loans.
of UK business loan lenders give an indicative decision within about 48 hours.
of UK business loan lenders common decline reasons are tracked, each with a recovery route for businesses that have already been turned down.
Methodology
Every lender in the BestBusinessLoans Lender Index is recorded against a common schema: product type, ticket range, typical rate, decision time, whether a soft search is offered at quote, whether the lender lends to limited companies only, and FCA status. We report the rate range rather than an average because lenders quote on different bases (APR, factor rate, monthly), and we omit any field, such as a personal-guarantee share, that we cannot measure consistently across the whole panel. The method is held constant between editions so the readings are comparable, and the edition date reflects the most recent re-audit.
Download the data
The full indicator table is available as a CSV under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence:
UK Business Lending Terms Index, June 2026 (CSV)
Cite this index
To reference these figures, please credit BestBusinessLoans and link to this page:
Source: BestBusinessLoans, UK Business Lending Terms Index (Edition 1, June 2026), https://bestbusinessloans.ai/research/uk-business-lending-terms-index/ (accessed June 2026).
Compiled by Oliver Mackman. Published by BestBusinessLoans. See also the Lender Index and our UK business lending statistics.