Time Finance Asset Finance Review

Time Finance Asset Finance at a Glance

Our Verdict

Best For

• Established SMEs in construction, manufacturing, engineering, agriculture, transport, catering, and hospitality with two- to three-year filed accounts
• Businesses that need asset finance and invoice finance bundled inside one facility, with one credit team and one set of covenants
• Companies declined by high-street banks because cyclical trading or a recent rough year fails the scorecard despite a strong current book
• Businesses refinancing existing plant or equipment to release working capital without selling the asset
• Service-sector operators funding soft assets such as commercial kitchens, server rooms, and office fit-outs that other lenders push to unsecured borrowing

Not Ideal For

• Micro-businesses or sole traders with a single small-ticket requirement under roughly £25,000
• Borrowers who want a published rate table before any phone call
• Applicants expecting a fully digital, self-serve application from quote to drawdown

Key Facts

What Is Time Finance Asset Finance?

How Time Finance Asset Finance Works

Time Finance plc is headquartered in Bath and listed on AIM under the ticker TIME. It traded for years as 1pm plc, a name that nodded to its origins as a fast-decision invoice finance lender, before rebranding in December 2020 after a string of acquisitions broadened the product set. The new name reflected what the business had become: a finance group selling several products to SMEs rather than a lender with a single line of business. Time Finance says it now lends over £217m to UK SMEs and supports thousands of UK businesses. The listing also brings published trading updates, audited accounts and disclosure obligations, so you can check the lender’s own finances before you sign a facility that may run for years.

Time Finance lends from its own balance sheet for most of what it writes, which means it owns the credit decision, the pricing, and the terms rather than passing the deal along to a third-party funder. Deals reach it directly through its regional teams or through a select panel of asset finance brokers, so you can approach Time Finance yourself or ask your broker whether it works with that panel.

The main practical reason to pick Time Finance over a single-product lender is its ability to put several facilities into one structured arrangement. Real SME funding needs rarely arrive in tidy boxes. Take a manufacturer that needs to refinance machinery to free up cash while also releasing money tied up in a slow-paying debtor book: with one credit team deciding both together, each facility can be sized knowing what the other will provide. An invoice finance lender solves the second problem and walks away from the first; a pure asset finance lender does the opposite. Time Finance can sit across both lines in the same conversation rather than leaving two unconnected lenders to pull against each other.

Hard Assets vs Soft Assets

Eligible sectors include construction, manufacturing, engineering, agriculture, transport and haulage, catering, hospitality, and leisure. Both hard and soft assets are on the table. Hard assets such as yellow plant, HGVs, and agricultural equipment carry clear secondary-market value and are straightforward to fund against. Soft assets such as catering equipment, IT hardware, and office fit-outs depreciate faster and carry more lender risk, which is why several competitors will not touch them.

Time Finance’s willingness to fund the soft side is a practical edge for service-sector businesses that are otherwise told to use unsecured borrowing at a worse rate. That breadth matters most to a restaurant refitting a commercial kitchen or an office replacing its IT hardware, two of the soft assets Time Finance names, and we count it among its clearest advantages over narrower lenders.

Main Finance Options

Hire purchase (HP): you use the asset across the repayment term and own it outright at the end. Typically the right call when the asset has a long productive life and you want it on your balance sheet.

Finance lease: the asset stays on the lender’s books and you pay for the right to use it. On a finance lease, Time Finance says ownership does not usually pass at the end of the term: the asset is returned, or a new agreement can be arranged.

Asset refinance: raises capital against plant or machinery you already own. Useful when working capital is tight but selling the equipment is not a viable option. Time Finance’s Speedflex client story shows asset finance working beside working capital: a £650,000 package of a £400,000 asset finance facility and a £250,000 confidential invoice finance facility, arranged after the business found traditional banking too inflexible.

Time Finance Asset Finance Rates and Fees

Interest Rates and Representative Costs

Time Finance does not publish a standard APR or rate table for asset finance. Pricing is bespoke and agreed deal by deal, which is the norm in B2B asset finance rather than a quirk of this lender. The rate you are quoted will turn on the residual value of the asset, the credit profile of the business, the term, and how the deal is structured.

Time Finance does not publish a minimum or maximum deal size either. The only figure we found is its Speedflex client story at £650,000, which shows the scale it will go to but not where it starts, so a business with one small asset cannot tell from the website whether it is in range. Any price comes from a quote, either directly from Time Finance or through a broker.

Fees and Charges

Documentation and arrangement fees are typically wrapped into the lease agreement rather than billed separately upfront. Time Finance does not publish a standard fee schedule. Specific charges will be detailed in the facility letter once a deal is structured. As with any asset finance agreement, read the end-of-term provisions carefully, particularly on a finance lease, where balloon payments or secondary rental periods can materially affect total cost.

What Affects Your Rate

Your quote moves with the asset’s resale value, the business’s trading history, profitability and existing debt, the term, and the complexity of the facility. Hard assets generally attract lower rates than soft assets, while a multi-product arrangement may carry structuring costs that a simple hire-purchase agreement does not. A clean credit file will price well with most lenders. Time Finance’s person-led underwriting earns its place when cyclical trading, a recent dip or a settled county court judgment (CCJ) would trip an automated score, and for a business in that position we would call Time Finance before a bank.

Time Finance Asset Finance Eligibility

Who Can Apply for Time Finance

Time Finance lends to all SME types, including start-ups. Many asset finance lenders want to see two to three years of filed accounts before they will look at an application, so a business in its first year can be ruled out before anyone reads the file. Time Finance will consider a younger business on the strength of a credible business plan and bank statements instead. The product suite targets limited companies across asset-heavy sectors, though sole traders and partnerships are not explicitly excluded from the product descriptions.

Trading History, Turnover and Credit Checks

Credit assessment involves a credit search on the business. For newer businesses, supporting documents such as a business plan and bank statements will be required. Time Finance describes its underwriting as conversational and common-sense-led, with a person assessing the case instead of relying solely on a score. That matters when a difficult trading year still weighs on the file even though the business has since recovered. We found no published minimum turnover threshold either, so a smaller business cannot rule itself in or out until it has spoken to someone.

Security and Personal Guarantees

For hire purchase and finance lease agreements, the asset itself typically serves as the primary security. Asset refinance deals are secured against the underlying equipment. Personal guarantees from directors are common across B2B asset finance, particularly for younger businesses or larger facilities. Time Finance does not publish its standard security requirements, and the position will vary by deal structure. Expect this to be discussed during your underwriting conversation rather than surfaced upfront in a published policy document, and ask the scope of any guarantee before you sign.

Time Finance Asset Finance Application Process

How to Apply for Time Finance

Applications come through the broker network or Time Finance’s regional teams. The offices in Bath, Birchwood, Manchester and Reading provide a relationship-led route for cases that need explanation rather than a self-serve form. There is no fully digital application journey, so the process begins with a conversation with a broker or relationship manager.

Documents and Checks Needed

Expect to provide details of the asset to be financed (supplier quotes or valuations for refinance), business financial accounts (typically two to three years for established businesses), recent bank statements, and, for newer businesses, a business plan. A credit search will be run on the business and, in most cases, on its directors. For multi-product arrangements, information on your invoice finance book or existing facilities may also be required.

Approval and Funding Times

Time Finance does not publish indicative decision timelines, although its Trustpilot reviews regularly praise swift responses and a clean process from enquiry to drawdown. A straightforward hard-asset application with a clean credit file requires less structuring than a soft-asset or multi-product facility. Without a published range, however, you cannot plan around a promised turnaround before the application has been assessed.

Time Finance Asset Finance Repayments, Flexibility and Risk

Repayment Terms and End-of-Lease Options

Time Finance offers flexible term lengths agreed for each deal and does not publish a fixed range. Shorter terms keep total interest down; longer terms ease monthly outgoings, which can be the difference between comfortable cash flow and a tight month during a growth push.

End-of-term provisions differ between HP and finance lease. With HP, title passes to you; with finance lease, the asset stays on the lender’s books and you will need to negotiate a secondary rental, return the asset, or arrange a sale and rebate. Read the end-of-lease clause before you sign, because that is where the total cost of hire purchase and a finance lease pulls apart, and where a balloon payment you did not price in at the outset can land at the very end.

Early Settlement and Default Risk

Time Finance does not publish early settlement figures. As with most asset finance agreements, early repayment is typically permitted subject to a settlement fee that reflects the outstanding interest. Default on a hire purchase or finance lease agreement puts the asset at risk of repossession, and a personal guarantee, if given, extends that risk to the guarantor’s personal assets. For asset refinance deals, default similarly risks recovery of the pledged equipment. We recommend running the repayment schedule against your slowest quarter of recent trading before you draw down, so you know the instalment still clears when work dries up.

Time Finance Asset Finance Customer Reviews

What Customers Like

Time Finance has 202 reviews on Trustpilot. Reviewers consistently flag three things: the speed of response, a clean process from enquiry through to drawdown, and the professionalism of individual relationship managers. A separate aggregator records a usefulness score of 4.8 out of 5 from 135 reviews, which suggests customers feel the service is practically helpful rather than merely polite, a meaningful distinction for a B2B lender, where the quality of the deal-structuring conversation matters as much as the headline rate. We rate that usefulness score as the signal that counts more than the star count.

Common Complaints

No recurring negative theme appears in the published review summaries we checked. The clearer drawbacks come from the product itself: no published rates for early cost comparison and no digital self-serve journey. Neither is unusual in this part of the market, but both add work before you can compare a Time Finance proposal with another lender’s offer.

Time Finance Support and Regulation

Customer Support

Time Finance operates through direct regional teams in Bath, Birchwood, Manchester, and Reading, alongside an established broker network. The regional structure is designed to put relationship managers close to the industries and geographies they serve. In practice you deal with a relationship manager in one of those offices instead of a central call centre, which fits a lender that assesses deals by talking them through. There is no published out-of-hours support arrangement.

Regulatory Status and Complaints

Time Finance plc is listed on AIM. Three subsidiaries are authorised and regulated by the FCA for consumer credit activities: Time Broker Finance Limited (FRN 714705), Time Vendor Finance Limited (FRN 628891) and Time Hard Asset Finance Limited (FRN 707542). Asset finance to limited companies sits largely outside FCA regulation, which is industry-wide and not specific to Time Finance, so the consumer protections that apply to personal loans do not typically extend to business asset finance facilities. Whether those protections reach you depends on whether your own agreement is regulated, and a sole trader or small partnership is more likely to have one than a limited company. Formal complaints should be directed to Time Finance directly; escalation to the Financial Ombudsman Service is available only for regulated products.

Time Finance vs Alternatives

Time Finance vs Lombard Asset Finance

Lombard, part of NatWest Group, is the largest asset finance provider in the UK market. It offers broad sector coverage and the balance-sheet depth of a major bank, and you will find the NatWest relationship useful if you already bank there. The difference with Time Finance is in underwriting flexibility: Lombard’s scale means more systematised credit assessment, which can work against businesses with non-standard files or cyclical trading histories. Time Finance’s conversational underwriting and willingness to structure multi-product arrangements give it an edge on complex deals that do not fit a template. Lombard may be competitive on rate for straightforward hard-asset finance and a clean credit file. For a more complex application, we recommend speaking to Time Finance first.

Time Finance vs Paragon Asset Finance

Paragon is a specialist lender covering SME and mid-market asset finance, including healthcare and professional services. Like Time Finance, Paragon operates with a relationship-led model and is not purely algorithmic in its underwriting. The distinction is product breadth: Time Finance’s ability to bundle asset finance with invoice finance and business loans into one facility is a differentiator that Paragon, as a single-product lender for asset finance purposes, cannot replicate. For a pure asset finance requirement, we recommend asking both lenders to quote. For interdependent funding requirements, Time Finance’s multi-product capability is the deciding factor.

Final Verdict: Is Time Finance Asset Finance Worth It?

Time Finance earns its place on the shortlist for any established SME in an asset-heavy sector that needs a lender willing to read the whole business rather than just the credit file. What sets it apart, on the evidence we read, is the human underwriting, the soft-asset coverage, the regional offices and, above all, the ability to package asset finance with invoice finance in one facility. The Speedflex case shows that last one at work: a £650,000 package of asset finance and invoice finance, arranged after the business found traditional banking too inflexible.

Time Finance is a poor fit if you need published rates, a digital application or a quick decision on one small asset. It becomes more persuasive when several funding needs affect each other and the lender must understand the balance sheet before structuring the facility. For that business, we’d approach Time Finance before a high-street bank. Give the lender the full financial picture, not just the asset you want to fund.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Time Finance publish its interest rates?

No. Each deal is priced individually on the asset type, residual value, borrower credit profile, and term. That is the norm in B2B asset finance, where blanket APRs are rarely published. The usable price is therefore the quote produced for your case, and we recommend benchmarking it against at least one rival offer.

Can start-up businesses apply for Time Finance asset finance?

Yes. Time Finance considers start-ups, though as a newer business you will need to provide a business plan and bank statements. The underwriting is case-by-case rather than score-driven, which makes it more accessible than lenders that enforce a hard minimum trading history.

What types of assets does Time Finance fund?

Both hard and soft assets. Hard assets include yellow plant, HGVs, and agricultural equipment. Soft assets, declined by some lenders because they depreciate faster, include catering equipment, office IT, and fit-out costs. That spread covers most sectors from construction and manufacturing through to hospitality and professional services.

How do I apply for Time Finance asset finance?

Apply through one of Time Finance’s regional offices in Bath, Birchwood, Manchester, or Reading, or through its broker network. There is no fully digital self-serve route; your process starts with a conversation with a relationship manager or broker who will scope the requirement and build the facility around it.

Is Time Finance regulated by the FCA?

Time Finance plc is AIM-listed. Three subsidiaries are authorised and regulated by the FCA for consumer credit activities: Time Broker Finance Limited (FRN 714705), Time Vendor Finance Limited (FRN 628891) and Time Hard Asset Finance Limited (FRN 707542). Asset finance to limited companies sits largely outside FCA regulation, which is industry-wide and not specific to Time Finance, so the consumer protections that apply to personal loans do not typically extend to business asset finance facilities.

What asset finance terms does Time Finance offer?

Time Finance offers flexible term lengths agreed for each deal rather than a published fixed range. Shorter terms reduce total interest cost; longer terms lower monthly payments and ease your cash flow during growth phases.

Can Time Finance combine asset finance with invoice finance?

Yes. This is one of Time Finance’s clearest differentiators. It can package asset finance and invoice finance into a single multi-product facility, with one set of covenants, one credit team, one reporting cycle, and pricing that reflects the combined risk rather than two unconnected lenders pricing against each other. The Speedflex case study, a £650,000 package of asset finance and invoice finance from one lender, shows it in practice, and a lender offering only one of the two cannot do the same.