How We Lend — Responsible Business Lender UK
How we decide as a responsible business lender
When you apply for a loan with Credicorp, this is exactly what happens behind the scenes — what we look at, what we do not look at, where a computer makes the first call and where a real person takes over.
Credicorp is a responsible business lender. We lend to UK limited companies and LLPs, not to consumers, and we lend to the company rather than to the director personally — there is no personal guarantee and no charge over your home. Every charge that can apply to a product is set out up front, with no hidden fees on our business loan.
We are required to be transparent about this under Article 22 of the UK GDPR. We also think it is the right thing to do — if you are trusting us with a decision that affects your business, you should be able to see how that decision is made. Being a responsible, transparent lender starts with showing our working in plain English.
Lending to limited companies sits outside FCA consumer-credit regulation, so we are not bound by the FCA Consumer Duty. We treat its fair-treatment outcomes as a voluntary benchmark anyway, because we think a fair, ethical lender should hold itself to that standard whether or not the rules require it.
What we look at when lending to limited companies
Every application is assessed on the facts that matter to a short-term business loan decision. The main ones are:
- Affordability. We need to see that the loan can be repaid on the schedule offered. The strongest evidence is your last six months of business bank statements. We accept these in two ways — through an Open Banking connection (read-only, you stay in control) or as PDF statements uploaded straight into the application.
- Credit reference data. A business credit check on the company at Experian Business, Creditsafe and Equifax Business. We do not run a consumer credit check on the director personally for the lending decision.
- AML and sanctions screening. A standard anti-money-laundering and sanctions check on the director and the company. This confirms we are dealing with the people we think we are dealing with and that the loan is not being used for anything we are not allowed to lend for.
- Your history with us. If you are a returning customer, how a previous loan with us was managed matters. A clean repayment record is a strong positive signal.
- Vulnerability signals. If anything in the application or your history suggests you may be going through a hard time, we slow the decision down and ask a human to review it. The aim is to lend responsibly, not to lend reflexively.
What we do not look at
There are plenty of things we deliberately keep out of the decision because they are not a fair or accurate basis for lending:
- Demographics. Age (beyond the basic 18+ check), gender, ethnicity, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, disability or any other protected characteristic is not a factor and never will be.
- Postcode-only inference. Where your business is located is one signal among many — it informs registered-office checks and sanctions screening — but a decline does not happen because of a postcode.
- Social media. We do not scrape Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X or any other platform for application signals. Your social profile is not relevant to whether we lend to your business.
- Hearsay and opinion. Only the data described above goes into the file. Anything else — a rumour, a forwarded email, a third-party opinion — is not part of the assessment.
Automated and human review
For straightforward applications, the first decision is automated. Our system reads the bank statements, runs the credit and AML checks, applies our policy rules, and produces an outcome within a few minutes. That is what lets us offer a same-day decision for most customers.
But automation is not the last word. Under Article 22 of the UK GDPR, you have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing where that decision significantly affects you. We respect that by making every decline reviewable by a human on request, and by routing certain cases — vulnerability signals, returning customers with an unusual pattern, anything our system is unsure about — to a person from the start.
Your Article 22 right in one sentence
If your application is declined and you would like a human to review it, you can ask — and we will. The original decision is set aside, a member of our credit team reviews the file from scratch, and you receive a fresh written outcome.
In short: is my loan decision automated?.
How to challenge a decision
If you have been declined and want it looked at again, you have several routes:
- Open a support request inside the customer portal.
- Email or write to us using the details on our Contact Us page.
- Telephone our credit team during office hours.
However you raise it, we will: acknowledge the request promptly, take the original decision off the table, ask a credit reviewer (a person, not the system) to look at the file with fresh eyes, and write to you with the outcome. Responsible lending means a no is never the end of the conversation — a human review is always open to you, at no cost, and we will explain the reasons behind the fresh outcome in plain English. We treat every challenge as a chance to check our own working, because a fair lender should be willing to be told it got something wrong.
You can also ask for a human to review your decision.
Open Banking
Connecting your business bank account via Open Banking usually speeds up the decision. We can read the statements directly, so there is no wait for a PDF upload. Open Banking is a regulated framework: the account-information connection is read-only, you authorise it through your own bank, and you can revoke it at any time. That data connection cannot move money, set up payments or change anything on the account.
More detail on the technology that supports all this is on our Our Technology page. Information on how we treat applicants going through a hard time is on our Vulnerability page. The full regulatory disclosures — privacy, automated decisioning, Open Banking processor, credit reference data — live on our Legal & Compliance page.
Go deeper: the technology behind our decisions.
Common questions about how we lend
Is Credicorp an FCA-regulated lender UK?
Credicorp lends exclusively to UK limited companies and LLPs for business purposes. Business lending to companies falls outside FCA consumer-credit regulation (CONC/CCA 1974), so the FCA does not regulate this product as a consumer lender. We voluntarily benchmark against FCA fair-treatment outcomes because we believe it reflects the right standard for a responsible business lender.
Does Credicorp require a personal guarantee?
No. We lend to the company, not to the director personally. There is no personal guarantee and no charge over a director's personal assets or home. The company is the borrower; the assessment is on the company's affordability and creditworthiness.
Are there hidden fees on a Credicorp business loan?
No. Every charge that can apply to a product is stated up front in the Key Information Sheet before you sign. We do not add fees after drawdown that were not disclosed at origination. A no hidden fees business loan means the cost is what we say it is.
What does it mean to lend to the company not the director?
When we say we lend to the company, it means the borrowing entity is the limited company or LLP — not the individual director. Your personal credit file is not used in the lending decision (we run a business credit check on the company, not a personal one on you), and personal assets are not at risk under the loan terms.