Co-operative Bank business loans: what it lends, and what it asks for

The Co-operative Bank lends a great deal more to businesses than the cards and overdraft it is known for. Its main business loan runs from £25,020 to £15m over a repayment profile of up to 25 years, there is a fixed-rate version from £250,000, and it writes commercial mortgages up to £15m. What it asks for is a Co-operative Bank business bank account, three years of filed accounts, security, and usually a guarantee from a director. Checked on 14 October 2026.

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Co-op's main business loan starts at £25,020

The Variable Rate Loan is Co-op's standard business loan. It runs from £25,020 to £15m over a repayment profile of up to 25 years, at the Bank of England Base Rate plus a margin Co-op sets from your company's financial position.

Bank Rate has been 3.75% since 18 December 2025, so that is the floor your margin sits on top of. Interest is charged monthly, and interest-only options are available on request.

The number to notice is £25,020. It is the floor across Co-op's whole term range, not just this product: the Variable Rate Loan, the Charity and Co-operative Lending Fund, and the Renewable Energy Funding Scheme all start there, and the Fixed Rate Loan starts ten times higher. If what you need is £15,000, Co-op has no term loan for you at all. It will point you at the overdraft or a card instead.

Co-op spreads its lending across nine separate pages and never puts the range in one place, so here it is:

Source: co-operativebank.co.uk product pages, checked on 14 October 2026.

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What it costs is not published

Co-op publishes no interest margin, no arrangement fee, and no representative APR on any of its term lending. Every page says the same two things: a competitive interest rate, discussed upon application, and arrangement and security fees, discussed upon application.

So you cannot work out what a Co-op business loan would cost you before you apply for one. That is normal for relationship-managed bank lending rather than a criticism, but it does change the order you have to do things in. You open an account, send three years of accounts and a signed form, and find out the price at the end. The two exceptions are the overdraft and the business credit card, which both publish a representative rate, and they are in the next section.

Anyone telling you what a Co-op business loan costs is guessing. We are not going to guess either.

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What you need before you can apply

The condition that catches most people is the first one. Every Co-op lending product needs a Co-operative Bank business bank account, and loan repayments have to come out of it. If you bank somewhere else, applying to Co-op means opening an account with Co-op first, so a loan decision is really two decisions. The upside, if you are already there, is that the same account carries all of it – loan, overdraft, and cards on one relationship.

Beyond that, Co-op asks the same four things on every product: that you are 18 or over, a UK resident with a business or charity address in the UK, authorised to borrow on the company's behalf, and an account holder.

For a term loan under £250,000 you send:

• Your full annual accounts from the past three years.
• Bank statements from the last six months.
• A 12-month cash flow forecast and an aged debtor list, if you have them.
• Your tax status and details of any borrowing you already have.
• Personal details, and assets, liabilities, income and expenditure, for everyone registered on the account.

Lending is typically secured against property or another asset, and Co-op will fund up to 70% of market value, or 80% on a vacant possession property. It says it usually requires a director's personal guarantee as security, though it may accept other forms. A personal guarantee makes the director who signs it personally liable if the company cannot repay, so read what you are signing and take advice on it. Security carries its own fees, including the cost of registering a legal charge over a business property, and Co-op warns that a property given as security, which may include your home, can be repossessed if repayments are not kept up.

Then there is the form. Co-op has no online lending application. You download a PDF, fill it in, and email or post it to its lending services team, which takes a working morning. Co-op aims to be in touch within two business days and to give you a decision within 10 business days of a full application. Over £250,000 you go through a relationship manager instead. One last condition: anything you buy with the money has to be in the company's name rather than a director's.

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The rest of the range, from a £250,000 fixed-rate loan to a £500 card limit

Four of Co-op's other products matter to a trading limited company, and two are built for a different kind of organisation entirely.

The Fixed Rate Loan is the same lending with a fixed rate attached, available in fixed terms of one to five years with a repayment profile that can still run to 25. Its floor is the hard part: Co-op says fixed-rate loans of £249,999 or under are not available at all, so this is a £250,000-and-up product. Break and amendment costs may apply if you repay or change it before the fixed term ends, which is the trade for knowing your repayment.

A commercial mortgage runs to £15m, on terms of one to five years with a repayment profile of up to 25 years, and fixed rates again only at £250,000 or more. Co-op will fund a residential investment portfolio as well as premises you occupy, and it is explicit that it will not fund property development.

The business overdraft is the one product where Co-op tells you the price. Arranged overdrafts up to £25,000 carry a representative 10.20% EAR (variable), based on £25,000 over 12 months, and unarranged borrowing is charged at 25.59% EAR (variable). Interest is worked out daily and charged monthly, so you only pay for what you use. There is an arrangement fee of 1.5% of the agreed limit or £50, whichever is greater, though Business Bank Account Plus customers pay nothing up to £25,000 and Federation of Small Businesses account holders pay nothing at any limit. The standard limit is £250,000, and above that you go to a relationship manager, up to £10m – Co-op's lending hub leads with the £10m figure, so it is worth knowing which number applies to you.

Two conditions are easy to miss. It may be secured if you ask for a limit over £10,000, and it runs about 12 months before an annual review, at which Co-op states plainly that it reserves the right to withdraw it at any time. That is true of most business overdrafts, and it is why an overdraft is a poor foundation for anything you have already committed to.

The business credit card gives you up to 56 days interest-free on purchases if you clear the balance in full by the due date, on a limit between £500 and £25,000, for a £24 annual fee. The representative rate is 21.8% APR (variable), with a 15.9% purchase rate per year on an assumed £1,200 limit, and the annual fee is built into that figure. It works with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Wallet, and Co-op puts £1 a month per account into its customer donation fund.

What it charges when things slip is less visible: £10.50 for a late or missed payment, and £10.50 every time you go over your limit, charged again each month you stay over. Cash costs 3% with a £3 minimum plus a 2.75% currency conversion fee, and gets none of the interest-free days. A limit above £10,000 needs two years of accounts or tax returns.

The business charge card is the same idea with the credit taken out: the full balance clears every month by direct debit, which buys you up to 48 interest-free days and no interest at all if you keep to it. It is free for six months, then £2 per card per month, and you can issue cards to staff with their own limits. Miss the payment date and Co-op charges debit interest at 2% above Bank Rate on what is left. One thing to check first: Co-op offers this card to incorporated businesses only, so it is the one product in the range with an entity test of its own.

The other two are for a different reader. The Charity and Co-operative Lending Fund lends from £25,020 to £10m over up to 25 years to charities, co-operatives, credit unions, and other not-for-profits, with £30m committed to it for 2024 – worth a look if you are weighing up where charities, co-operatives, and social enterprises bank. The Renewable Energy Funding Scheme will fund up to 100% of eligible project costs, from £25,020, released once you have evidenced what the project costs.

Which one you want depends less on the amount than on what the money is for. A card is ideal for covering a bill in a pinch and wrong for buying premises; an overdraft absorbs a bad month and should not be funding a five-year asset; a term loan is for something you have costed and will own.

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The Ethical Policy decides whether you can be a customer, and the account decides whether you can borrow

Co-op has been running a customer-led ethical policy since 1992, when it became the first UK bank to have one, and it has refreshed it six times since. Most banks' values pages make no difference to a lending decision. This one does, and it is the most distinctive thing about borrowing from Co-op.

Here is the mechanism. Every new business customer fills in an ethical policy questionnaire as part of the application. If anything in your answers looks like it conflicts with the policy, the application goes to a specialist team for extra screening, and if you do not meet the policy, Co-op will not take you on as a customer at all. Because every lending product above needs a Co-op business bank account, that screening sits in front of the credit decision rather than beside it. A perfectly creditworthy company can be turned away on grounds that have nothing to do with its accounts.

Co-op publishes examples of businesses it has declined, which is more than most banks will tell you. They include a consultancy serving the defence sector, a business making irresponsible claims about how well its product worked and how safe it was, a consultancy supplying equipment used in oil extraction, and a manufacturer of equipment for intensive farming. It reports the yearly number of declines in its sustainability report, and it reviews businesses it has already taken on under what it calls a central screening exercise.

Read it the right way round and it is a genuine reason to choose Co-op. If it matters to you what your bank does with your deposits, you can check the policy and hold it to it, which you cannot do with a bank that has only a statement of values. If your business sits anywhere near one of those excluded activities, find out before you open the account rather than after.

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Co-op Bank is mutually owned again, and nothing you deal with has moved

In 2025 The Co-operative Bank joined the Coventry Building Society family, which returned it to mutual ownership. Between them, Co-op says, they have over 100 branches, more than four million members and customers, and over 300 years of combined experience.

For a borrower, that is background. The brand, the nine product pages, the ethical policy, the application forms and the addresses you send them to are all still The Co-operative Bank's own, and nothing in its business lending journey points at Coventry Building Society. If you had heard the bank had been bought and wondered whether the products had changed with it, they have not.

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If Co-op says no, nothing happens automatically

The government's Bank Referral Scheme makes designated banks offer any small business they decline a referral to one of three finance platforms, so a 'no' at the bank turns into a conversation with someone else. It covers nine banks, designated by the Treasury on 1 April 2016: Allied Irish Banking Group trading as First Trust Bank, Bank of Ireland UK, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank, Northern Bank trading as Danske Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, and Santander UK.

The Co-operative Bank is not one of them. It also publishes no appeals process and no onward referral anywhere in its business lending pages, which is a difference from the high street: Lloyds, for instance, publishes both.

So if Co-op turns you down, that is the end of the process rather than the start of another one, and the next move is yours. It is worth asking what failed, because the answer changes where you go next.

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Where else a limited company can look

The blocker decides the destination. If the amount is the problem – you need less than £25,020 – you want a lender whose floor is lower, and most non-bank lenders start in the low thousands. If the security is the problem, look at unsecured business loans, though expect to be asked for a director's guarantee almost anywhere. If having to move your bank account is the problem, the whole non-bank market lends without it, and so do some banks. If it is the 10 business days, you are looking at online lenders.

If you want a bank and Co-op is not it, the clearing banks publish more pricing than Co-op does: Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays, and Santander all show a representative APR on their smaller business loans, and Allica and Shawbrook publish rate cards on larger secured lending. If you want another bank with an ethical position, Triodos and Charity Bank both lend to businesses and publish their own criteria. You can compare business loans from banks and other lenders range by range.

One query that brings people to this page deserves a straight answer: the Co-operative Bank does not do bridging loans. There is no bridging product on its lending pages and none in its sitemap, and the obvious URLs return nothing, checked on 14 October 2026. We do not offer bridging or property finance either, so if that is what you need, neither of us is the answer – start with how bridging finance actually works and then go to a specialist.

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The gap in Co-op's range, and where a Flexi-Loan fits

Put Co-op's published terms together and a shape appears. Nothing it lends is below £25,020. Nothing is unsecured by default. Nothing can be applied for without first opening an account with it, and nothing is decided in less than 10 business days. For a planned purchase you have costed and will hold for years, none of that is a problem, and Co-op's rate will very likely beat ours. For a timing problem, every one of those four is a problem.

If a VAT or corporation tax bill is due before your cash comes in, an iwoca Flexi-Loan lets you pay it on time and repay early for free once your sales catch up. It is a business loan with flexible repayment options, and three of its mechanics are about timing rather than price. You have 30 days to draw down after we approve you, so the money can be lined up before the bill lands instead of sitting in your account earning interest for someone else. You do not have to take the full amount approved. And there is no fee for repaying early, so the loan can last the three weeks between the bill and the money rather than the five years the paperwork allows.

Flexi-Loan in action: Dovetail & Slate. A seasonal dip put pressure on cash flow at Guy Walker's recruitment business, and he needed funding to cover VAT, salaries and supplier bills until revenue picked up. He bridged the gap without committing to funding for longer than he needed, repaying as cash flow recovered. Read Guy's story

Speed is doing more of the work in these decisions than it used to. Our SME Expert Index, published in August 2025, found 73% of finance brokers now name the speed of a decision as the main reason they send clients away from the high street, up from 63% the quarter before, and 71% said mainstream banks were pulling back from small business lending. That bites hardest on businesses whose costs land before their income does – recruiters and contractors paying people weeks before the invoice clears, and anyone whose biggest outgoings are payroll and tax rather than stock.