Weekly intelligence on UK SME lending — delivered to your inbox.
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06 March 2026
Read full edition →The Hidden Engine of SME Lending Demand: 9% of All Small Business Debt Exists Because Large Companies Won't Pay on Time
One pound in every eleven that UK SMEs borrow exists solely because their customers refuse to pay on time — and incoming legislation could make that demand evaporate. Government-commissioned research published by the Small Business Commissioner found that the stock of late payments owed to UK businesses sits at approximately £26 billion at any given time, costing the economy almost £11 billion a year, with around 14,000 firms closing annually as a direct result, according to the government's own late payments research. The same research estimates that roughly 9% of all SME debt finance is taken out specifically to bridge the cash-flow gap created by late payment. That is not a rounding error....
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27 February 2026
Read full edition →The £15bn Overdraft Desert Is Reshaping SME Credit Risk — And Most Lenders Haven't Noticed
The collapse of the SME overdraft market is the single most important structural shift in UK small business finance this decade, yet the policy response announced this week barely acknowledges it. On 25 February, the government launched a new CDFI taskforce targeting £1 billion in additional lending over five years — the same day Allica Bank launched an SME overdraft product explicitly aimed at what it calls a "£15 billion overdraft gap." The juxtaposition is telling. Overdraft lending to small businesses has cratered from £18 billion in the late 1990s to just £2.7 billion today, according to Allica Bank's Rebooting SME Finance report, a product that once comprised 30% of all SME bank finance now accounts for just 5%....