Short answer: the length and continuity of your business banking history give the assessment more to read from, but they are not a pass-or-fail test on their own. We are not counting how many years the account has existed — we are looking at whether the recent record is genuine, complete and steady enough to show how the company trades today.
What "time at bank" actually means here
This is a different question from how long your company has traded or when it was incorporated — those are covered separately in how much trading history we look at. Time at bank means the depth and continuity of the account itself: how many months of real activity are visible, whether the picture runs unbroken, and whether the account you connect is genuinely the one the business runs on day to day.
When you share your account by read-only Open Banking, the connection typically returns several months of history at once. A longer, unbroken run lets the assessment see your full rhythm — busy months and quiet ones, when invoices land, how outgoings fall — rather than a narrow snapshot. That depth makes a decision fairer, because context stops a slow month being misread.
Why continuity helps the read
A continuous account tells an honest, joined-up story. The assessment reads roughly the last six months for the rhythm of income, regular outgoings, and any signs of strain such as repeated returned payments — the same signals set out in how your bank data affects the decision. The more complete that run is, the more confidently those patterns can be read in proportion rather than guessed at.
Gaps are where confidence drops. If trading income runs through one account for part of the period and a different account for the rest, the visible history looks thinner than the business really is. That is not a black mark — it just leaves less to read, which can make an offer more cautious.
What a thin banking footprint means in practice
A thin footprint is any situation with little continuous activity to assess. None of the cases below is an automatic decline — they simply mean the assessment has a smaller record to work from, so it leans more on what it can see and may reflect that in the amount or term offered.
- A newly opened account. The business may trade well, but only a short run is visible yet. A few more months of activity strengthens the read.
- A recent switch. If you have moved bank recently, the new account may only show a short history. Connecting the account with the longest continuous record gives more depth.
- Income routed elsewhere. If takings have flowed through a personal or secondary account, the main business account understates the trading. Running income through it going forward closes that gap.
How much this weighs against everything else
Banking depth is one signal among several, never the whole decision. It sits alongside how the company trades and its business credit file — the full list is in what information goes into a lending decision. A shorter account history can be balanced by strong, regular income and a clean credit record; equally, a long-standing account will not carry an application whose figures do not support the repayments. The single question never changes: can this company comfortably repay this amount.
If your banking history is thin today
Let the assessment see the fullest, most current picture available: connect your main business bank account rather than a secondary one, and choose Open Banking so the history comes through cleanly — see how we verify bank statements and Open Banking. If only a short run is visible right now, building up a few more months before applying often does the most.
Important to know
Credicorp lends only to UK limited companies and LLPs for business purposes, as a lender rather than a broker, and we read your account on a read-only basis — we never move money through the connection. We assess the company, not the director personally, and take no personal guarantees. As an exempt business lender we sit outside the FCA consumer-credit regime, so the Financial Ombudsman Service and FSCS do not apply to this borrowing.
See also: Can I ask a person to review an automated decision?, Can I find out why I was declined?, Can I reapply after a decline?.