Bank Finance

[tin03gin]

Has anyone attempted to gain finance for a start up from a high street Bank recently?

I have spoken to a few today, and find the differences in application incredible.

Alliance and Leicester take the 15 minute phone chat route, no documentation needed, no projections, just a credit score, and then you’re in.

HSBC want tons of documentation.

Barclays desire that the business puts in half of the desired amount required.

Lloyds don’t seem to know what they want....

Has anyone managed to get start-up finance/loans this quarter? How easy did you find it?

[Adam2009]

Hi Steven,


It's definitely still out there, companies who buy and resell via ourselves need finance as we offer no credit facilities. It's tough at the best of times, but persistence is the key. Some of the smaller startups have found recently that the business bank manager has not been too keen, but a 15 minute phone call to a standard personal loan provider and they have a cheque the next day.

I would suggest that whether it is a requirement or not if you are going down the business bank route to stick with your own current account business bank and to finance as much as possible yourself.

I don't know what your business is but a lot of businesses which we deal with found it a massive strain this year when the banks called in credit, over the last few years rather than using credit as a tool to build their business they had really ended up reliant on it and now many of them are in liquidation.

We actually find that by not offering credit our shops tend to be more aware of their own stock and margins etc