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Which kind of business finance fits?

What you need the money for, what your business is legally, and whether you would give a personal guarantee, between them, decide which kinds of finance are open to you.

Read worked examples of how this plays out
Finance type navigator

What you're asked, and why the order matters

Each answer narrows the field before the next question is even asked. What the money is for comes first, because it rules out whole families of finance before your legal form or your appetite for a guarantee gets a look in. Your legal form comes next, because it decides which consumer-credit protections travel with you into the loan. Whether you'd stand behind the business with your own assets comes last, because it decides whether the routes that ask for a personal guarantee are on the table at all.

  1. What the money is for

    A purchase you can point to, like equipment or a vehicle, points toward finance secured against that asset. Money tied up in invoices someone else owes you points toward finance secured against the invoice book. A gap between paying out and being paid points toward a facility you draw on and repay as the gap opens and closes.

    Equipment, a vehicle fleet, or stock

    Secured against the asset being bought.

    Unpaid invoices

    Secured against money already owed to you.

    Working capital, a seasonal dip, or growth

    A facility drawn and repaid as the need moves.

    Getting started

    Narrows the field further, since trading history isn't there yet.

  2. What your business is legally

    A limited company or an LLP borrows outside consumer-credit protections whatever the loan is for. A sole trader or a small partnership can stay inside those protections depending on how much is borrowed. The difference isn't paperwork: it decides which rights you keep if a loan goes wrong later.

    Limited company or LLP

    Outside consumer-credit protections, at any loan size.

    Sole trader or partnership of two or three

    Can remain inside consumer-credit protections, depending on the amount.

    Larger partnership

    Treated more like a company for this purpose.

  3. Whether you'd give a personal guarantee

    A personal guarantee is a promise that if the business can't pay, you will. Answering that you'd give one opens routes that ask for it as standard. Answering that you wouldn't narrows the result to the instruments that don't ask.

    Willing to guarantee

    Opens routes that rely on you standing behind the business.

    Not willing to guarantee

    Narrows the result to instruments that don't ask for one.

  4. What comes back

    The result names the families of finance that fit your three answers, each one pointing to its full entry on Each Kind of Business Finance, Defined Once, along with a note on which consumer-credit protections apply given your legal form.

Nothing you type into the navigator is submitted or stored; it runs in your browser and nowhere else. What it returns is a starting point for the conversation, not a recommendation to apply for any product or approach any lender, and a detail specific to your situation can still change the answer.

What the navigator hands back

Answer the three questions and the result is a short list of finance families that fit what you've told it: your purpose, your legal form, and whether you'd give a personal guarantee. That might be asset finance, invoice finance, a revolving credit facility, or several families at once, depending on how specific your purpose is. Each one links through to its full entry, where the purpose, the typical requirements, the exit cost and the usual way it goes wrong are laid out in the same order every time, so you can read one instrument and know where to find the same information on the next.

What the protection note tells you

Next to each family sits a note on which consumer-credit protections apply given your legal form. A limited company or an LLP borrows outside those rules whatever the amount. A sole trader or a small partnership can fall inside them, and the size of the loan is part of what decides it. The note tells you which side of that line your answers put you on, so you know what protection you keep or give up before you raise it with a lender or an adviser.

What the result is not

The navigator sorts by what you enter, and it can only work with what you give it. A purpose described too loosely, or a guarantee answer you're still unsure about, will carry straight through into the list it returns. Treat the result as a set of families worth reading up on, not as a recommendation to apply for anything or approach a particular lender. The instrument entries on Each Kind of Business Finance, Defined Once are where you check whether a family actually fits once you've read what it requires and what it costs to leave.

Nothing you enter here leaves your browser

Working out which finance fits means describing your business to something before you get an answer back. What you want the money for, what your business is legally, whether you would put your own assets behind it. That is the kind of detail people are used to typing into a form and then wondering where it ends up.

The three questions here are worked out where you type them. Your browser does the matching itself, and nothing you enter travels anywhere else or gets kept once you move on.

You can change an answer and see how the result shifts without a record building up anywhere. Try a different legal form, or switch your answer on a personal guarantee, and look at how the families of finance on offer change. What comes back still depends entirely on what you told it, and it cannot see the parts of your situation you haven't described, so treat it as something to take into a conversation with a lender or adviser.