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The FCA, or Financial Conduct Authority, is the UK's conduct regulator for financial services. It authorises and supervises firms that carry on regulated activities, sets rules on how they must treat customers, and can take enforcement action. Its consumer-credit remit is focused on protecting individual borrowers — consumers — rather than businesses borrowing as separate legal persons.
- What it regulates
- Consumer credit and most retail financial services provided to individuals.
- Where its consumer-credit perimeter ends
- Lending to a body corporate — a limited company or LLP — generally falls outside it.
- Legal basis for the boundary
- Articles 60B and 60L of the FSMA Regulated Activities Order 2001.
The consumer-credit perimeter
"The perimeter" is the boundary of what the FCA regulates. Consumer-credit regulation exists to protect individuals, so it applies to lending to consumers and, in some cases, very small unincorporated traders. Lending to a limited company or an LLP — a separate legal person — sits on the far side of that boundary. The disclosure and conduct rules written for consumer credit are therefore not all engaged when the borrower is a company.
Articles 60B and 60L
Article 60B of the FSMA Regulated Activities Order defines regulated credit agreements, and Article 60L sets out exemptions, including the treatment of borrowing by bodies corporate. Together they are the legal basis on which lending to UK companies and LLPs sits outside the consumer-credit regime. This is a feature of how the law is drawn, not a gap or a loophole.
Where FCA references still apply
Even though Credit Corp's lending is outside the FCA's consumer-credit perimeter, FCA authorisation matters in other contexts. Where our guides point a business toward independent financial advice, they recommend using an FCA-authorised IFA or broker, because that protection is real and worth having. The scoping is important: the FCA regulates the adviser, not Credit Corp's body-corporate lending.
The FCA and Credit Corp
Credit Corp lends only to UK limited companies and LLPs, not to consumers or sole traders, so its lending sits outside the FCA's consumer-credit perimeter under Articles 60B and 60L of the FSMA RAO. We are not authorised for consumer credit and do not represent ourselves as such. We do, however, apply many recognised lending standards voluntarily. Credit Corp is an independent UK lender (Company No. 17338274; ICO ZC189608).
See also
- Exempt lending — why body-corporate credit sits outside the consumer-credit regime.
- Body corporate — the kind of borrower Credit Corp lends to.
- FSMA RAO — the order that defines the perimeter.
- Responsible lending — the standards we apply.
Short-term business credit carries a high annualised cost. Borrow only what you need, for the shortest term required. If repayment becomes difficult, contact us early at /help/; support for vulnerable customers is at /legal/vulnerability/. For exact pricing, see /ai.md and /llms-full.txt.