New Start Up Loans Guidelines

Start-Up Loans have released:

• A new loan Assessment form

• A new Minimum Standards document

• A new Lending Policy

They will immediately be used to assess eligibility of an applicant. Once eligibility for the scheme has been established, applications should be assessed against three key principles – creditworthiness, personal affordability and business viability.

Applicants applying for more than £5,000 are now split into ‘bands’ to determine the assessment criteria needed for the application. A Capital Repayment Holiday may affect the banding and mean a deeper assessment is required.

This banding should not be shared with the applicant, this is for internal processing only.

Banding will be determined by the applicant’s credit profile and affordability and is based on risk. This does not alter the interest rate they will receive, this is still 6% fixed, nor will it affect how much they can apply for. The change will, however, mean that applicants deemed a higher risk will need to provide more information, supporting documentation and research before their application can be approved.

Once your client has started their application, we will be notified of their banding and when we request any further documentation we will let you know the information that will be required.

All applicants should be asked whether they have previously applied for alternative sources of finance; if yes, what finance they applied for and whether the finance was achieved; and if not, why they have not explored alternative sources before approaching Start-Up Loans.

We have updated our Assessment Form to comply with the new requirements, this will be supplied when your application has been deemed eligible and is ready to work on.

We are unable to share these policies but can advise your applicant each step of the way.