A sole trader with no trading history, funded and paid out inside 24 hours

• 24 hoursEnquiry to payout
• New startTrading history
• Sole traderBusiness type

Customer situation

A newly self-employed bathroom fitter in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear who needed a van before he could start taking work. No filed accounts, no trading history, and no limited company behind the application to assess instead.

Asset required

A work van for a bathroom installation business.

The challenge

It is the hardest profile in the market to place. A lender running a single credit policy finds nothing to score and stops there, which tells the applicant nothing about whether the van was ever fundable. Applying to several lenders in turn would have left a credit footprint each time and made the next decline more likely.

Options considered

• Wait until accounts existed, would have meant months without a van, and therefore without income.
• Apply to high-street lenders in turn, each application marking the credit file on the way to a likely decline.
• CW Asset Finance route, go straight to the lenders who assess sole traders and new starts properly.

The CW solution

Rather than putting the application through lenders whose policy was never going to fit it, we approached the lenders on our panel who assess sole traders and new starts on bank statements and work pipeline rather than filed accounts, and secured the best rate available for the profile.

What makes a new start fundable

It is worth being plain about the bar, because “no trading history” does not mean no requirements. A lender willing to write this profile wants one of two things behind it: twelve months of trading, or a homeowner applicant with genuine experience in the trade they are setting up in. One of those has to be true. Without either, the honest answer is that the deal is not there yet, and hearing that on the first call is worth more to somebody than three declines and a marked credit file.

Key outcome

From first conversation to payout took 24 hours. For someone who had not started trading yet, being able to begin work the next day rather than the next month was the entire point.

A new business getting declined tells you almost nothing. It usually means that lender does not write new starts, not that the deal was unfundable. Knowing which lenders do is most of the job.