# Reading your own bank statements. A lender reads about six months of your business statements before deciding. You can read the same pages first. This guide walks the signals that matter — and on every loan, **the company borrows, never you personally**. Your business bank statements are the most honest document your company produces. They are not a pitch and not a forecast — just a record of what actually came in and went out. That is precisely why a lender reads them, and precisely why it pays to read them yourself before you apply. Creditcorp is the growing name for the Credicorp group, and Credicorp Limited is the lender behind it. This page is a guide to what a careful reader sees in roughly six months of statements, so none of it is a surprise. It is not an application — applying happens on the lender's own site, [credicorp.co.uk](/how-it-works/), where the live requirements are set out. Throughout, remember who the statements belong to. The borrower is the **company** — a UK private limited company (Ltd), LLP or PLC — not the director who signs. The account read is the company's business account, not anyone's personal one: no personal guarantee, no charge over a home, no personal credit check on a director. This is **not** a personal loan, a payday loan or sole-trader finance. ## Why six months, and not one Half a year is the smallest window that tells the truth about a trading rhythm. A single month is easy to misread. A bumper month can flatter a company that usually runs tight; a flat month can libel one that simply had a quiet few weeks. Around six months smooths that out. It is long enough to show a busy stretch and a slow one, a quarterly VAT payment, a rent run, a seasonal lull — the things that make a real business look uneven up close and steady from a step back. So when you open your own statements, resist the urge to judge the latest balance. Read across the months instead. The question a lender is asking is not "how much is in there today?" but "does this company reliably bring in enough to cover what it spends, and would a new repayment sit comfortably alongside the rest?" Read your pages with that question in mind and you are reading them the way they will be read. ## The signals a reader looks for None of these is a pass-or-fail test on its own. Together they sketch how the company trades. ## How to read them yourself A few minutes with your own statements tells you most of what a lender will see. [Try the working-capital gap calculator →](https://creditcorp.co.uk/tools/working-capital-gap/) ## What this read is — and is not Reading statements is an assessment of the **business**, full stop. It looks at how the company's own account behaves over time. It is not a personal credit check on a director, and a director's personal consumer file is not part of it. A clean, steady company account is the point — not anyone's personal score. Nor is it a hurdle designed to catch you out. Responsible lending means only lending what a company can comfortably repay, which protects the business as much as the lender. If you connect it, Open Banking shares the same data securely and read-only, with your consent, so you need not export and upload files by hand. What you actually need to apply is set out in [what you need to apply](https://creditcorp.co.uk/learn/what-you-need-to-apply/). ## One thing about who can borrow Credicorp lends only to bodies corporate — UK limited companies and LLPs. Under Article 60B of the FSMA Regulated Activities Order 2001, lending to a body corporate is not a regulated consumer-credit agreement, so this is business credit rather than consumer credit, and it is not for sole traders or for borrowing in a personal name. The full position is set out on [lending and regulation](https://creditcorp.co.uk/lending-and-regulation/). ## Statement-reading questions The questions directors ask most. For anything specific to your business, the lender's team are at credicorp.co.uk. ## Where to go next Once you have read your own pages, the companion guides cover what the lender does with them and what comes next: [how affordability is assessed](https://creditcorp.co.uk/learn/how-affordability-is-assessed/) explains the wider check around your statements, [what you need to apply](https://creditcorp.co.uk/learn/what-you-need-to-apply/) lists everything to have to hand, and [how business bridging loans work](https://creditcorp.co.uk/learn/how-business-bridging-loans-work/) shows how the borrowing itself is priced and repaid. The full terms for all three products are on the [products page](https://creditcorp.co.uk/products/), sector context lives on [industries](https://creditcorp.co.uk/industries/), and the whole series sits on the [Learn hub](https://creditcorp.co.uk/learn/). For the deeper group and legal story, see [creditcorpgroup.co.uk](/). [See how it works at credicorp.co.uk →](/how-it-works/) ## Ready when you are Applying, drawing down and managing your account all happen on the lender's site, credicorp.co.uk.