There is no fixed minimum age your company has to reach before it can borrow from us. We do not wait for a particular number of months on the clock, and we do not require a set of filed annual accounts at Companies House before we will look at an application. What we need is enough of a picture to lend responsibly, and a newer company can often give us that sooner than people expect.
It is about trading, not the incorporation date
The day your limited company or LLP was registered tells us very little on its own. A business incorporated last week and a business incorporated two years ago can both be in the same position if neither has moved much money yet. So rather than counting from the incorporation date, we look at how the business actually operates: money coming in, money going out, and whether the borrowing makes sense for where you are now.
How Open Banking stands in for filed accounts
A brand-new company will not have a year of filed accounts, and that is fine. When you connect your business bank account by Open Banking, we can see real, current trading activity directly — often far more up to date than accounts that describe a period already months in the past. A few weeks of genuine activity through your business account can tell us more than a first set of accounts would. This is why connecting your bank is the single most useful thing a young company can do, and you can read more in How does Open Banking speed up my application?
So how soon, in practice?
You can apply as soon as the business is genuinely trading through its own bank account. If the company has been incorporated but has not started trading at all, there is little for us to assess yet, and a dormant or barely active company is harder to lend to — see Does a dormant or newly active company qualify? The honest answer is that the trigger is activity, not age. Once money is moving in a way that reflects a real business, you are in a position to apply.
What we look at for a young company
- Active, current trading visible through Open Banking — the strongest signal for a new business.
- An accurate, up-to-date Companies House record for the company and its directors or members.
- A clear, sensible purpose for the finance that fits the stage your business is at.
We do not need a long track record, but we do weigh whatever history exists. For more on that, see How much trading history do you look at?
If it is too soon right now
If your company is so new that there is almost nothing to see, we may not be able to make an offer yet. That is not a permanent no — building even a short run of real trading through the business account usually makes a later application stronger. We never ask a younger business to make up for thin history with a director personal guarantee, because we do not take personal guarantees at all.
We lend only to UK limited companies and LLPs, not to sole traders or individuals, and we are a lender rather than a broker. For who can apply, see Which business types can apply to Credicorp? As exempt business lending outside the FCA consumer-credit regime, this finance is not covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or FSCS.
See also: Can a newly formed company apply?, Can a charity or charitable company apply?, Can a CIC or community interest company apply?.