The questions we get asked on almost every call.

Nobody can answer that honestly before seeing how a business trades, and anyone who does is guessing. Two businesses asking for the same amount on the same day get different numbers, because pricing is set by the lending partner after a full assessment.

What we can tell you is the shape of it. Short-term facilities are priced monthly. Longer terms are priced annually. Property finance is priced on the asset and the exit rather than on the business at all. Within each of those the distance between a strong profile and a weaker one is wide enough that a single published figure would mislead you rather than help.

What we can show you is the cost in pounds. Foresight gives a monthly figure for any amount, from lower to higher, built from funding we have arranged rather than from published rate cards. No details taken, nothing recorded, and it is an estimate rather than a quotation. That is deliberate: a headline rate on a website is a number almost nobody receives, and when the real figure arrives later, after expectations have been set, it is the single most common reason a business walks away from a facility it had already been approved for.

Foresight gives you the range before you speak to anyone. When an offer comes back, you get the full breakdown. Total repayable, monthly payment, fees, and what happens if you settle early. Before you sign anything, not after.

On unsecured business lending, usually not. We are paid by the lending partner. On property finance we do charge, and the amount is agreed with you before any work starts. If a fee applies to your case, you will know before you commit to anything.

The lending partner, on unsecured lending. It is disclosed in the agreement you sign, so you can see it. We are paid when a case completes. Not on application, not on introduction.

Sometimes. The bank is usually cheaper on rate if it says yes. The question is whether it will. For a lot of established businesses the answer has already been no, or the process took months to get there.

Where a business has a strong profile, our pricing can be competitive with a bank. Where it does not, we can still get it funded.

Start with what the comparison usually is. An advertised personal rate is not an offer. Until someone has actually looked at you, it is a number in an advert.

The part that actually costs you is tax. Personal borrowing is repaid out of money you have already paid tax on, and there is no relief against corporation tax. Money moving between you and the business also creates a trail somebody has to keep straight. On anything of size, that costs more than the rate gap saves. Your accountant will put real numbers on it.

Then there is what is available. Personal facilities top out well short of what a growing business needs, and they are assessed on your income rather than on what the business turns over. A business needing £200,000 is not choosing between cheap and expensive. The cheapest money is the money you can actually get when you need it.

Lending partners are not lending their own money. Much of it is institutional, and it comes at a cost to them. The arrangement fee covers the cost of putting the facility together and the margin they need to keep doing it. Every lender has one in some form, whether it is charged as a fee or built into the rate.

It comes down to affordability. What the business turns over, what it already services, and what the account actually supports. Foresight will show you the cost of any amount. Whether that amount is right for your business is what the assessment is for.

Risk, assessed by the lending partner. Which is why we assess it first. Six months of statements are read before anything is submitted, so you are not put in front of a lender who was always going to decline.

On property finance it works differently. A secured case is decided on the asset, what it is worth, what is already charged against it, and how the facility gets repaid. Turnover and credit profile matter far less.

There is no guarantee in either case. There is a considerable difference between a case that has been assessed and one that has been sent.

It is not a mark against you, but it is an absence, and lenders read an absence as uncertainty.

A business with no borrowing history gives an underwriter nothing to assess beyond the account. Your personal credit file does not fill that gap. It is one of the reasons an established, profitable business can still be quoted worse than it should be.

Where that is the position, a smaller facility used properly and cleared on time builds a record under the company, and the next conversation starts from a different place. It is not the fastest route to the largest number, and it is often the cheaper one over two years.

No. Weaker figures usually mean a higher rate or a shorter term, not a decline. There is a price for risk and it is normally payable. Approval is never one factor. Trading, account conduct, existing commitments and credit profile all count.

Not on its own. If the bank account is clean and the trading supports it, a loss-making year does not stop a business being funded.

It depends on whether it is settled.

An active unsatisfied judgment, against the business or against you personally, means we will not place the case on unsecured lending. Submitting it would cost you a search and change nothing, and it is better to hear that now.

A satisfied judgment, with proof it is settled, is a different conversation and is looked at case by case.

Property finance works differently. A judgment does not automatically stop a secured case, because a bridge is decided on the asset and the exit.

Because someone is running the company.

On almost all unsecured lending there is a personal guarantee, which makes the director directly relevant rather than incidental. Even without one, a lending partner is assessing how the person in charge of the money handles money.

It is not a judgement about you. It is the same question a bank asks and does not say out loud.

Not in itself. Appetite differs between lending partners and moves over time. A case declined in one place is regularly approved in another on the same statements. What matters more is how many attempts have already been made, because each one leaves a mark.

No. Some lending partners apply a cap on what a non-homeowner can borrow. That is their own risk control, it varies, and it is rarely mentioned upfront. Others apply no cap at all. Knowing which is which is the difference between a capped offer and a full one, and it is part of what placement actually means.

No, but it shapes what is realistic. We look for at least a year of trading and a filed set of accounts. At two years a short-term facility is usually achievable. A longer term loan is harder and depends on the rest of the picture.

No. Most businesses do. What matters is whether the business can service what it has and what it is asking for. If the affordability is there, existing borrowing is not a barrier.

No. Most businesses that took one still have it, and it is not read as a mark against you. It is existing borrowing like any other, and what matters is whether the business services what it carries and what it can carry on top.

This applies to property finance. A bridge is short-term lending, and the exit is how it gets repaid, normally a sale or a refinance.

No lending partner will proceed without one, and a bridge without a credible exit is the single most dangerous thing in this market. It is the equivalent of affordability on an unsecured facility, and it carries the same weight.

If you already own property, a charge can often be taken against it and applied toward the purchase. The equity becomes the deposit and nothing has to come out of the bank.

It depends on the properties and the lending partner, and it is worked out case by case.

It needs a closer look, not a quick answer.

One or two, some time ago, against an otherwise clean account, is usually explainable. A pattern is read as a signal about the business rather than an accident, and lending partners read it that way whatever the turnover looks like.

It is one of the things we will tell you about before anyone else sees it, and one of the things that can change in three months.

Making an enquiry does not. Us reading your bank statements does not. Neither of those touches your file.

A hard search normally happens when you accept an offer, at the lending partner’s end. Some partners work the other way round and assess first, deciding after. A small number search at the point of submission.

Where that applies, you are told before anything is submitted. No search that leaves a mark is run without you knowing it is about to happen.

A soft search leaves no footprint other lenders can see. A hard search does, and repeated hard searches make the next application harder. It is the reason we assess from statements first.

No. We are not a marketplace and we do not shop a case around. The assessment happens in-house from your statements. A case goes to the lending partner whose criteria it fits, not to a panel.

It can, where the lending partner reports to the credit reference agencies. Many do. We can confirm whether yours does before you proceed.

Faster than most people expect. Statements in the morning, assessed, and an answer the same day is normal. Some cases are resolved on the first call.

Once the lending partner’s checks are complete and the agreements are signed, funds can arrive the same day. The variable is rarely us. It is how quickly documents come back and how the partner’s own process runs.

A person calls you. Not a call centre and not an automated sequence.

We ask how much and what for. If it looks viable, we ask for six months of statements. Then you get a straight answer, usually the same day.

Worth knowing how the money works here. We are paid when a case completes, not on application and not on introduction. So there is no reason for us to collect your statements unless the case is real, and no reason to keep you in a process that is going nowhere.

When there is something to say. If you would rather everything by email, that is fine. We will work the way you prefer.

It depends entirely on where the case already is.

Two to four weeks is normal from a standing start. The fastest we have done is three days — a lender pulled out, the searches were done, and we reused the existing valuation. That took working round the clock and a client who picked up the phone every time we rang. It is not the number to plan on, but it is real, and it shows what the constraint actually is.

The lending is rarely what takes the time. Valuation and the solicitors set the pace, which is the opposite of unsecured, where the lending partner is the slow part.

So what decides it is how much has already been done. A clean title, a valuation that can be reused, a solicitor who has done this before. Anyone quoting seven days as a rule is quoting their fastest case and calling it their average.

If you have a date you have to hit, tell us at the start. It changes which lending partner the case goes to, and on a tight one that is the whole difference.

Because they show where the business actually is. Affordability, account conduct, what is already being serviced, and whether the trading supports what you are asking for. It is also how most lending partners underwrite, whatever their website says about accounts. Six months. Five to seven minutes from your banking app.

Accounts describe a year that has already finished. A business could have turned over three million last year and barely traded in the last three months. The accounts would not show you that. The bank account would. Accounts are sometimes needed alongside. They are rarely enough on their own.

Because they can already see a good deal of it. The largest UK banks are required to share data on their business customers with credit reference agencies, who pass it to other lenders. Current account behaviour, loans, corporate cards.

So a lender running an automated decision is not guessing. It is reading a monthly summary of how the account has been run, alongside the company’s filed accounts and its credit file.

That is not the same as an email telling you that you are pre-approved for a figure. A lender making an automated decision has run a search and has the shared data in front of it. A marketing email has neither.

What it does not have is the detail, or the current month. The shared data runs four to six weeks behind and it is a summary rather than a transaction list. That is why we still ask for statements, and why a case that looks marginal on the summary can look fine on the actual account.

It is also why a lender can come back mid-process with questions after saying yes in principle. That is normal. The decision was made on the summary and the questions are the detail catching up.

Six months as standard on unsecured lending. Some facilities need three. Occasionally a case needs longer, and we will say so rather than asking twice.

Property finance is different. We need the property, the transaction and the exit before we need statements at all.

Full PDF statements, downloaded from online banking, one month at a time. Not screenshots, not photographs of a screen, not transaction exports, not spreadsheets. Lending partners will not accept those, so sending them costs days.

Where accounts are required, full accounts with a balance sheet, not the abbreviated version filed at Companies House.

Everything you send is held in encrypted, access-controlled storage in the UK or under equivalent protection. Not on a shared drive, and not accessible to anyone outside the United Kingdom. Security and data

On property finance, yes, and the borrower pays. On some cases the fee can go onto the facility instead of being paid up front. That depends on the lending partner and is agreed in advance.

Unsecured lending does not involve a valuation. The statements are the assessment.

No. Your case goes to the lending partner it fits. That is the point of assessing it properly first.

On unsecured lending, almost always. Guarantee requirements are set by the lending partner, not by Funding11. Where one is required it is set out in the lending partner’s offer and facility documentation.

It creates a personal liability for the guarantor which is separate from the liability of the business. If the business does not repay, the guarantor does.

Terms vary. Some guarantees are unlimited and cover the full balance. Some are capped. The scope, the limit and the circumstances in which it can be called are set out in the lending partner’s documentation.

You are responsible for reading that documentation in full before accepting a facility, including any guarantee, security or indemnity requirement in it. Nothing Funding11 says about a facility is a substitute for the lending partner’s own terms.

A personal guarantee is a personal legal commitment. Funding11 recommends you take independent legal advice before signing one, and you should not sign one without having had the opportunity to do so.

Very little unsecured lending is available without a guarantee, and what exists is priced accordingly. Whether a guarantee is required is the lending partner’s decision.

On unsecured lending there is no charge over your property. A personal guarantee is a personal liability, not security over an asset.

On property finance, the property given as security can be repossessed if repayments are not maintained.

Yes, and it matters.

We will explain a facility in plain commercial terms, and that explanation is not the agreement. The agreement is the lending partner’s own documentation, including any guarantee, security or indemnity in it.

Nothing we say replaces reading it. If something in it does not match what you understood, that is the moment to ask, not after it is signed.

No, and we are not required to be. We arrange commercial finance for limited companies for business purposes. Lending of that kind falls outside regulated activity under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, because the protections in that regime exist for consumers rather than for companies borrowing commercially.

We do not arrange consumer credit, personal borrowing, or regulated residential mortgages, in any circumstances.

Because regulation follows the activity, not the firm.

A broker arranging consumer credit, personal borrowing or residential mortgages has to be authorised, because those protections exist for individuals. A broker arranging commercial finance for limited companies does not, because that borrowing sits outside the regime.

A broker doing both will be authorised, and correctly so. It does not mean the commercial side of what they do is regulated. It is not, for them either.

What it does mean for you is that the Financial Ombudsman Service is not available in respect of our services. We say that plainly rather than leaving you to find out, and we publish our own complaints procedure.

No. We arrange finance. Lending partners lend.

Brokers advertise panels of two and three hundred lenders. It makes very little difference. The unsecured market is smaller than that, and if a business is not fundable, a larger panel does not change it.

What changes the outcome is knowing which partner will approve a specific profile and how the case should be presented.

You will be told once an offer is made and before you sign anything. We do not disclose it earlier. That is how this market works.

Of course, and you are welcome to. What you will see is the published criteria. What decides the case is the underwriting behind it, and that is not published anywhere.

The lender’s documents. Funding11 arranges finance and explains facilities in commercial terms. It does not provide legal, tax, accounting or investment advice, and nothing said by Funding11 forms part of the agreement between you and a lending partner.

Any facility you enter into is governed solely by that partner’s terms and conditions. Funding11 is not a party to it and is not responsible for its terms or its performance.

A loan is a lump sum into the account, repaid on a fixed schedule. Predictable, and the right structure when you need capital outright.

A credit line is an approved limit you draw from as required, each drawdown on its own term. You are not paying for money you have not taken. Different problems, not better and worse.

You do not have to know. You tell us how much and what for, and we work out the structure. That is what you are coming to us for.

Yes, and it is common. A loan and a credit line together, or a card alongside either.

Any legitimate business purpose. Once funds are with you, how they are deployed in the business is your decision.

We do not arrange personal borrowing. If you are putting your own money into the business, that is entirely your decision and nothing to do with us.

No. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 covers consumer credit agreements, and the cards we arrange are commercial facilities to limited companies and LLPs, which are not. It is one of the trade-offs of borrowing as a company rather than as an individual.

A disputed transaction can normally still be raised as a chargeback through the card scheme, which is a different mechanism with different rules and no statutory backing.

Where a provider advertises purchase protection on a commercial card, that is an insurance product they have added, not Section 75. Read what it actually covers.

Yes, on the cards we currently arrange. Add it in the provider’s app once the account is live and it works like any other card in your wallet.

Occasionally, where there is a reason to. It is not the normal route and it will not usually be the fastest.

Broadly, if you are a UK limited company with at least £360,000 a year going through the business bank account, with established trading and a clear reason for the funding. That is the starting point, not a guarantee.

On unsecured lending, £360,000 a year through the business account, which is roughly £30,000 a month. Bank turnover, not filed accounts, because that is how most lending partners underwrite.

Property finance is not assessed on turnover at all. A bridge starts at £150,000 and is decided on the asset and the exit. A portfolio facility needs at least £250,000 of equity across the properties you already hold.

Mostly, and that is what this site is written around, because it is what almost every business we fund is.

LLPs are fine too. Our lending partners work with them and we place them the same way, they just come up far less often.

Sole traders we do not work with. That is the one genuine no.

That happens, and it is workable. It is not the route most investors are taking now, but plenty of portfolios were built that way and they do not stop being fundable because of it.

Two things follow. The purpose has to be business or investment rather than personal, and a property you live in is outside what we do entirely. And the case gets a closer look before anything moves, because there is more to check.

Not a problem. Just a slower first conversation than a company case.

We are not the right fit. We work with established trading businesses.

Most of them. Gambling and adult entertainment are among a small number of sectors we do not place. Everything else is looked at on its merits.

Come back. Almost every client who returns for a second facility gets funded.

Often, depending on the facility and where the business is at the time.

Anything relating to the existing facility, the lending partner. Anything new, a top-up, or a question about what to do next, us. The relationship does not end at completion.