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

Customer situation

A newly self-employed bathroom fitter 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.

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.”

— Conor, CW Asset Finance

Every application is assessed on its own merits and all finance is subject to status and lender approval. This is one client’s outcome and is not a guide to what any other business will be offered.