When you apply for a loan, it can feel like your application disappears into a machine. We want to lift the lid a little and introduce the people and the thinking behind our lending decisions. Our credit team is at the heart of the company, and how they work says a lot about how we try to lend responsibly.
Understanding how decisions get made is useful whether you are about to apply, waiting to hear, or simply curious about who you are dealing with. So here is an honest look at what happens, and who makes it happen.
Who is on the team
Our credit function is a small, experienced group rather than a faceless department. The team is led by an experienced Head of Credit (with more than fifteen years assessing business lending) and supported by credit analysts who review applications day to day. Between them they have seen a wide range of companies and circumstances. We will introduce the team by name once those individual public profiles are signed off; in the meantime the policy and process described here is what governs every decision, regardless of who is on the rota.
What they share is a habit of looking past the surface of an application to understand the business underneath it. A number on its own rarely tells the whole story, and our team is trained to ask the right follow-up questions.
The focus is the company’s affordability
The single most important thing our credit team assesses is whether your company can comfortably afford the loan. We lend to UK limited companies and LLPs for business purposes, to the company and not to its director personally, and we take no personal guarantee. So our assessment is about the business, not the individual.
In practice, that means we look at things like:
- Turnover and trading history, to understand the shape and stability of the business.
- Bank-account history, often viewed securely through Open Banking, to see real cash flow rather than a snapshot.
- The company’s business credit file, checked with agencies such as Experian Business, Creditsafe and Equifax Business.
We do run an identity and anti-money-laundering check on the director, but we assess affordability on the company, not on the director’s personal income or benefits, and we do not record the loan on the director’s personal consumer credit file. Our how we lend page explains this in more detail, and our guide to what we look at when we decide walks through it step by step.
Why a human always reviews
We use sensible tools to help process applications quickly, but the decision is not left to a machine alone. A member of our credit team reviews the outcome, because real businesses do not always fit neatly into a model. A company might have a quiet month for a perfectly good reason, or a one-off event that a purely automated check would misread.
Human review cuts both ways. It means we can sometimes say yes where the numbers alone looked borderline but the story made sense. It also means we will decline where lending would not be responsible, even if a model might have nudged it through, because lending a company money it cannot comfortably repay helps no one.
If the answer is no
Sometimes we have to decline, and we try to do that honestly and without leaving you in the dark. If your application is not successful, our guide on what happens if your application is declined explains what it means and what your options are. A decline is a decision about a particular application at a particular time, not a judgement on you as a director.
Speed, with care
We know timing often matters, and we typically reach a decision quickly. But quick does not mean careless. The credit team’s job is to be both fast and responsible, and they take both halves of that seriously. If you want to know more before you apply, our FAQs are a good place to start, and you are always welcome to contact us with a question.
