The Business Bulletin
What’s the best way to fund my business? New start-up and early stage businesses are like ‘acorns are to oak trees’ for the UK economy. All successful businesses were start-ups at some stage and it is vital to the future of the UK economy that entrepreneurs continue to create new start-up businesses.
It is, however, a sad fact that after 5
Now, whilst cash may be king,
years only 40% of new-start businesses
getting your hand on it can be a big
are still trading. According to the
problem! For example, the less history
Office for National Statistics [ONS] the
you have, the more difficult it is to
biggest reason for business failures is:
raise that loan you need to grow the
opinions on Access to Finance for SMEs in the UK, one of the key findings was:
Insufficient investment and working capital finance
for early-stage businesses, the only
The lack of awareness of the range of finance options available.
way to persuade a ‘Lender’ to provide
This comes as no surprise to anyone
a Loan is to offer some significant
involved in the commercial finance
security against it. Often this will be
world as changes over recent years
For many businesses the well-known
property based unless the business
have created a totally different
dictum “cash flow is king” certainly
itself has already acquired sufficient
landscape to the funding choices
rings true, especially for SME’s and
‘unencumbered assets’.
now available compared with the
business. In many cases, particularly
start-ups. I emphasise the smaller businesses as often larger enterprises will be able to rely on the pure size of their business and/or unencumbered assets to obtain credit.
18 | Issue 17 – Finance
In the findings of a survey conducted in the Spring of 2021 by Ipsos Mori, on behalf of the British Business Bank [BBB], to research
past. There was a time when the only
