Best Invoice Finance Companies UK
Bibby Financial Services has the broadest eligibility here, and it is the only provider in this comparison that takes startups and sole traders. It publishes its advance rates by product rather than blending them: up to 85% on factoring, up to 95% on invoice discounting. Triver is the only one of the seven that publishes what it charges (0.06% a day), and it funds in minutes rather than weeks.
- Accepts startups and sole traders: one of very few institutional providers to do so.
- Covers 300+ industries; both factoring and confidential discounting available.
- Up to 85% advance on factoring, up to 95% on invoice discounting; funds within 24 hours.
Bibby Financial Services is our pick for broad eligibility: it is the only provider here that takes startups and sole traders, and it publishes its advance rates by product rather than blending them: up to 85% on factoring, up to 95% on invoice discounting. Triver is our pick for speed and price, and it is the only provider in this comparison that publishes what it charges at all. Below those two, the shortlist splits by circumstance rather than by rank: Ultimate Finance for the highest advance, Close Brothers for an established ledger, Kriya for bank backing, Sonovate for recruitment, and Skipton for confidential discounting at small turnovers.
One thing shapes everything below. Six of these seven providers publish no price at all. That is normal in invoice finance, and it still means you cannot compare the cost of the money without handing over your details to six sales teams first. We have marked every field by what we could actually verify, and left the gaps visible rather than filling them with a market average.
Best Invoice Finance Companies at a Glance
| Provider | Best for | Finance type | Advance | Setup → repeat funding | Pricing / fee structure | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Businesses that struggle to qualify elsewhere: startups, sole traders, and companies in sectors other funders avoid | Invoice factoring, invoice discounting, export finance, construction finance, recruitment finance | 85% factoring / 95% discounting | Setup not publicly specified → 24h | Quote required | View Deal → | |
| Established limited companies and LLPs that want to fund selected invoices fast, at a price they can see up front | Selective (single-invoice) invoice finance | Not publicly specified (£100k cap per advance) | <10 min → <2 min | 0.06%/day published | View Deal → | |
| Businesses that want selective invoice discounting or a whole-ledger facility backed by a regulated bank | Selective invoice finance, whole-ledger invoice finance | Up to 90% | Not publicly specified → 12–24h | Quote required | View Deal → | |
| Established businesses invoicing consistently across several customers, especially those that may need asset-based lending later | Invoice discounting, invoice factoring, asset-based lending, bad debt protection, Liquidity Plus, Growth Guarantee Scheme | 90% | ~2 weeks → 24h | Structure published, rate quote required | View Deal → | |
| Businesses that want the maximum advance and a fast traditional facility, including sole traders and partnerships | Invoice factoring, invoice discounting (confidential option), optional cashflow loan | Up to 95% | ~1 week → 24h | Quote required | View Deal → | |
| Recruitment agencies, consultancies and labour marketplaces with a contractor payroll to meet before clients pay | Invoice finance for contract, permanent, PAYE and statement-of-work placements, with back-office services | 100% | ~24h → 1–2 days | Quote required | View Deal → | |
| Smaller businesses that want confidential discounting rather than factoring, and would be turned away on size elsewhere | Confidential invoice discounting, disclosed invoice discounting | Up to 90% | Not publicly specified | Quote required | View Deal → |
Every figure read from the provider’s own site on 21 August 2026. “Quote required” means the provider publishes no rate, not that the facility is free. The fee structures are not alike, so the pricing column is a description rather than a like-for-like comparison: see the cost section for a normalised example.
Best UK Invoice Finance Companies
Seven providers, each earning its place on a different axis. We have not padded the list: a directory of thirty funders is easy to build and no help at all when you are trying to get to a shortlist of two.
Bibby Financial Services – Best for Broad Eligibility
Shortlist Bibby if the thing standing between you and a facility is eligibility rather than price. It is the broadest door in this comparison. The trade-off is that you will not know what you are paying until you have had the conversation.
Triver – Best for Fast Selective Invoice Finance
Shortlist Triver if you want one invoice funded quickly and want to know the price before you apply. It is the most transparent option in this comparison by a wide margin. The catch is size: the facility stops at £700,000 and each advance at £100,000.
Kriya – Best for Flexible Bank-Backed Invoice Finance
Shortlist Kriya if you want selective funding with a bank behind it and you can absorb a consultation rather than an instant decision. Check the trading-history rule against the facility you are actually applying for, because Kriya and Allica publish different answers.
Close Brothers – Best for Established Businesses
Shortlist Close Brothers if your ledger is steady, your business is established, and you would rather have a bank and an asset-based lending route as you grow than the fastest possible decision. Expect a couple of weeks before the first pound arrives.
Ultimate Finance – Best for High Advance Rates
Shortlist Ultimate Finance if you want the largest possible share of each invoice released up front and a facility running inside a week. It also has the widest entity net of any traditional funder here, taking sole traders and partnerships as well as limited companies.
Sonovate – Best for Recruitment Businesses
Shortlist Sonovate if you place contractors and the real problem is paying them on Friday when the client pays in sixty days. It funds the whole invoice, not a percentage of it, and it runs the timesheets and invoicing as well, which is the part general funders leave you to do.
Skipton Business Finance – Best for SME Invoice Discounting
Shortlist Skipton if you want confidential invoice discounting but your turnover is nowhere near the seven-figure floor the big discounters apply. It has structured deals down to £100,000 of turnover, which is the point of the whole proposition.
The major-bank option: NatWest and RBS. If you would rather run the facility alongside your bank, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland offer invoice discounting through RBS Invoice Finance Limited, managed on the FacFlow platform. They publish up to 90% of what you are owed within 24 hours, and a minimum turnover of £300,000 for invoice discounting or £6.5 million for asset-based lending. You do not have to bank with them: their own answer is that they do not mind who you bank with. We have kept it out of the main shortlist because the turnover floor puts it beyond most of the businesses this page is written for, not because it is a weak product.
If none of the seven fits. Every provider above sets its own eligibility, and the gaps between them are real: under two years’ trading rules out Triver, a sole trader is turned away by Triver and Kriya, and a ledger under £50,000 is below even Sonovate’s floor. A broker searches a panel in one application instead, which saves repeating yourself seven times. Funding Options by Tide covers invoice finance across a lender panel. We earn a commission if you take a facility through that link, which is why we have said so here rather than in the small print, and it is a broker rather than a lender: you are handing your details to an intermediary, not applying direct.
Which Type of Invoice Finance Do You Need?
Two decisions narrow the field faster than any provider comparison. The first is whether the funder talks to your customers. The second is whether you hand over the whole ledger or pick invoices one at a time. Settle those and most of the seven above rule themselves in or out.
Invoice Factoring
Invoice factoring means the lender manages credit control. They contact your customers to collect payment, so your customers receive remittance requests from the factor rather than from you. This is visible (customers know you are using a facility), and it costs more, because you are paying for the collection service as well as the money. The practical rule we apply is that factoring suits businesses without the internal capacity to chase payment. If nobody in your office has time to work an aged debtor list, you are buying that time back. Bibby, Close Brothers and Ultimate Finance all offer it. Our guide to how factoring credit control works covers what the funder actually does on your behalf.
Invoice Discounting
Invoice discounting is invisible to your customers. You keep credit control, chase payment yourself and manage the relationships as normal, while the lender advances funds against the invoices without contacting your debtors. It typically costs less, precisely because the lender is not doing the collecting, but it asks that you have the resource and the process to collect reliably, which is why funders have historically reserved it for larger companies. Skipton is the exception worth knowing about here, writing confidential deals for turnovers as small as £100,000. If you are weighing the two, our factoring versus discounting comparison goes into the mechanics in more depth than this page needs to.
Selective or Single-Invoice Finance
Selective invoice finance lets you fund individual invoices without committing the whole ledger. You choose which invoices to advance against, and when. There is usually no minimum facility, no contract and no obligation to use it in any given month. The cost per invoice runs higher than a whole-ledger facility (you pay a premium for the flexibility), but nothing is locked in. For a business with one large customer paying slowly, selective finance can cost less in total than a whole-ledger facility you only partly use. Triver, Kriya and Sonovate all fund this way; our selective invoice finance guide and spot factoring explainer cover the single-invoice case in detail.
Whole-Ledger Invoice Finance
Whole-ledger facilities assign your entire debtor book to the lender. Every invoice you raise is financed through the facility, which gives the lender full sight of your receivables. In return you get the highest advance rates and the lowest cost per pound of funding, and the commitment is contractual, with a minimum term and a notice period to exit. For businesses invoicing consistently across several customers, this is almost always the cheaper route per pound advanced. It is also the one where the terms matter most and are published least: four of the seven providers here publish neither a contract length nor a notice period.
Compare Invoice Finance Companies
Five comparisons, each on the same basis for every provider. We built these tables from the providers’ own pages rather than from broker directories, which is why several cells are empty: where a provider publishes nothing, the cell says so instead of borrowing a market average.
Eligibility
Eligibility is the criterion that decides most shortlists, because price is invisible until you apply. Three thresholds do the work: turnover, trading history, and whether the funder will deal with your legal structure at all. Sole traders are the sharpest dividing line: Triver and Kriya are limited-company and LLP propositions, while Bibby and Ultimate Finance take sole traders and partnerships as well.
| Provider | Minimum turnover | Trading history | Entity restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bibby Financial Services | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | UK businesses including startups, sole traders and limited companies |
| Triver | Over £100,000 a year | More than 2 years, B2B | UK limited company or LLP. Open Banking connection required |
| Kriya | Not publicly specified | Conflicting official information: 12 months and one filed set of accounts (kriya.co) or 2 years and two full years of accounts (allica.bank) | UK-registered limited companies or LLPs (allica.bank) |
| Close Brothers | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Established UK businesses |
| Ultimate Finance | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Any UK business selling to other businesses on credit: limited companies, sole traders and partnerships |
| Sonovate | £50,000 a year | Not publicly specified | Businesses invoicing other businesses |
| Skipton Business Finance | Deals structured for turnovers as small as £100,000 | Not publicly specified | UK SMEs invoicing other businesses |
Kriya’s row carries a genuine conflict between two current official sources and we have not resolved it: see the provider block above.
Meeting the published thresholds only gets you through the door. What decides your facility size and your rate is the ledger itself, and a funder will work through a sample of your aged debtor list before approving anything. Three things in it carry the weight.
- Debtor quality. Invoice finance lends against money your customers owe rather than against you, so a ledger of creditworthy commercial or public-sector customers funds cheaply. Invoices to financially weak customers, or to consumers, are usually not eligible at all.
- Concentration. This is the one that catches people out. Funders cap how much of the ledger any single customer may represent, so a business whose biggest client is 80% of its invoicing is a harder risk than its turnover suggests, and will see either a smaller facility or a higher rate.
- Invoice quality. Invoices that are regularly disputed, subject to credit notes, or issued on terms beyond 90 days are awkward to finance, whatever your turnover looks like.
Advance Rates
An advance rate is the share of each invoice released up front; the balance follows when your customer pays, less fees. Quoting one figure per provider is misleading where the provider itself quotes two. Bibby publishes up to 85% on factoring and up to 95% on discounting, and the gap is not a rounding error: it is 10% of every invoice. The reason is that discounting leaves collection with you, so the funder is lending against a ledger it trusts you to work. Our guide to advance rates explains what moves the number for a given business.
| Provider | Maximum advance | By product | Evidence status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bibby Financial Services | 85% factoring / 95% discounting | Factoring: up to 85%. Invoice discounting: up to 95% | Partially published |
| Triver | Not publicly specified (£100k cap per advance) | Not published as a percentage. Advances are capped at £100,000 per invoice | Published |
| Kriya | Up to 90% | Up to 90% | Conflicting official information |
| Close Brothers | 90% | 90% upfront | Partially published |
| Ultimate Finance | Up to 95% | Up to 95% of unpaid invoice value | Partially published |
| Sonovate | 100% | 100% of the invoice | Partially published |
| Skipton Business Finance | Up to 90% | Up to 90% of the value of your invoices | Partially published |
Funding Speed
This is the comparison most sites get wrong, and the error costs readers real money. “Funding in 24 hours” almost never means you will have cash tomorrow. It means that once the facility exists, an invoice funds within a day. Getting the facility to exist is the slow part: Close Brothers is candid that money is often available a couple of weeks after approval and onboarding, because somebody has to underwrite your debtor book first. If you are trying to cover a payroll on Friday, the setup column is the one that matters.
| Provider | Facility setup | Repeat invoice funding |
|---|---|---|
| Bibby Financial Services | Not publicly specified | Within 24 hours of raising the invoice |
| Triver | Under 10 minutes | Under 2 minutes; same day, 24/7 |
| Kriya | Not publicly specified | Within 24 hours; Allica states 12 hours for drawdown |
| Close Brothers | Money often available within a couple of weeks once approved and onboarded | Typically within 24 hours of submitting eligible invoices |
| Ultimate Finance | Within one week | Within 24 hours of receiving invoices |
| Sonovate | Services can start in as little as 24 hours after the first appointment | Within one or two business days |
| Skipton Business Finance | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified |
Contract Terms and Flexibility
Here the published record thins out badly. Only three of the seven state their position on contract length, and all three of those are the selective providers saying there is no commitment. The four whole-ledger funders publish neither a minimum term nor a notice period. That means the terms governing how you leave arrive with the agreement rather than before it, which is the wrong order for the reader and the right one for the funder. Ask for them in writing at the illustration stage, not after.
| Provider | Contract length | Notice period | Minimum usage | Personal guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bibby Financial Services | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified |
| Triver | No long-term borrowing; no minimum usage | Not applicable: no term commitment | None | Not publicly specified |
| Kriya | No contract on the selective product, per Kriya | Not publicly specified | None | Not publicly specified |
| Close Brothers | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified |
| Ultimate Finance | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified |
| Sonovate | No long contracts; used on a client-by-client basis | Not publicly specified | None | Not publicly specified |
| Skipton Business Finance | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified |
No provider in this comparison publishes a personal guarantee position either way. Treat that as a question to ask, not an absence of one.
Customer Disclosure and Credit Control
Whether your customers find out is a commercial decision as much as a financial one, and for some businesses it settles the choice on its own. Factoring is disclosed and the funder collects. Discounting is confidential and you collect. The three providers that offer both let you make the call; the ones that publish no position at all should be asked directly, because you cannot un-disclose a facility once a customer has had a letter from your funder. Where a customer fails to pay, what happens next turns on the recourse terms, which is a separate question from disclosure and worth settling at the same time.
| Provider | Customer disclosure | Who collects | Bad-debt protection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bibby Financial Services | Your choice: disclosed with factoring, confidential with discounting | Bibby’s credit control team collects on factoring; you keep collections on discounting | Bad Debt Protection offered as a separate service |
| Triver | Not publicly specified | You keep collections | Not publicly specified |
| Kriya | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified | Not publicly specified |
| Close Brothers | Your choice: disclosed with factoring, confidential with discounting | Close Brothers collects on factoring; you keep collections on discounting | Bad debt protection offered |
| Ultimate Finance | Your choice, confidential option available | Ultimate Finance collects on factoring; you keep collections on discounting | Debtor Protection offered as an optional add-on |
| Sonovate | Not publicly specified | Sonovate runs credit checks, timesheets, invoicing and collections | Not publicly specified |
| Skipton Business Finance | Confidential or disclosed, both offered | You keep collections under both products | Not publicly specified |
How Much Does Invoice Finance Cost?
Invoice finance carries two charges. A service charge covers running the facility and, on a factoring deal, the credit control that comes with it. A discount charge is the cost of the money itself for as long as the invoice is outstanding, and it is usually quoted as a margin over the Bank of England Bank Rate, currently 3.75%, maintained on 29 July 2026. Close Brothers publishes exactly this structure (a service fee charged as a percentage of turnover and a discount fee on the daily outstanding balance), but not the levels.
That is the honest difficulty with costing this product. Of the seven providers here, only Triver publishes a rate. So we have split the example in two, and labelled which half is a published figure and which half is ours.
The scenario, used identically throughout: a £50,000 invoice, £42,500 advanced (85%), outstanding for 30, 60 or 90 days. Every figure below is calculated on the £42,500 actually advanced, never on the full invoice value. Mixing the two bases is the commonest way this comparison gets rigged, and it flatters whichever provider is measured on the smaller number.
Triver: from a published provider rate
Triver charges 0.06% a day on the advance. On £42,500 that is £25.50 a day, with no service charge and no setup fee. A minimum upfront charge of ten days’ fees applies; at ten days that is £255, so it sits below the actual fee at all three durations here and changes none of the totals.
| Days outstanding | Calculation | Total cost | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | £42,500 × 0.06% × 30 | £765 | Published provider rate |
| 60 days | £42,500 × 0.06% × 60 | £1,530 | Published provider rate |
| 90 days | £42,500 × 0.06% × 90 | £2,295 | Published provider rate |
Rate published by Triver and checked on 21 August 2026. The arithmetic is ours.
A whole-ledger facility: a BusinessExpert model
No whole-ledger provider in this comparison publishes a service charge or a discount margin, so there is no published figure to put beside Triver’s. What follows is our model, on our assumptions, shown so the two shapes can be compared: not a quote, and not any provider’s rate.
- Assumed service charge: 1.0% of invoice value, charged once: £500
- Assumed discount charge: Bank Rate 3.75% plus a 2.5% margin, so 6.25% a year on the £42,500 advanced
- Both assumptions are ours. Your illustration will differ, and the service charge in particular moves a long way with turnover, debtor quality and facility type
| Days outstanding | Service charge | Discount charge | Total cost | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | £500 | £218 | £718 | BusinessExpert calculation |
| 60 days | £500 | £437 | £937 | BusinessExpert calculation |
| 90 days | £500 | £655 | £1,155 | BusinessExpert calculation |
BusinessExpert calculation on assumed rates, not provider rates. Discount charge computed as £42,500 × 6.25% × days ÷ 365.
On these numbers the whole-ledger model comes out cheaper at every duration, and that is roughly what you would expect: you are paying less for the money because you have committed the whole ledger to get it. But read the two tables for what they are. One is arithmetic on a rate a provider actually publishes. The other rests on a service charge and a margin we chose. Change our 1.0% service charge to 2% and the 60-day whole-ledger cost overtakes Triver’s. That sensitivity is the argument for getting an illustration in writing before you commit, and it is why we would not tell you selective finance is dearer as a general rule.
The commitment is the other half of the price, and it does not appear in either table. A whole-ledger facility carries a minimum term, a notice period and, often, a minimum usage level, so an underused facility can cost more per pound than the rate suggests. Selective finance has none of those, and you pay nothing in a month you do not use it. Our breakdown of invoice finance fees covers the charges that sit outside the headline two.
How We Ranked the Providers
“Best” is worth nothing if you cannot see how it was decided, so here is the working. We assessed eleven UK invoice finance providers and kept seven. Every provider fact on this page was read from that provider’s own website on 21 August 2026, and each is recorded in the provider block with its source and an evidence status.
| Weight | Criterion | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | Eligibility and flexibility | Turnover floor, trading history, entity types accepted, and how many businesses the provider can actually serve |
| 20% | Cost transparency | Whether a rate is published at all, and whether the fee structure is explained |
| 15% | Advance rate | The maximum published advance, taken at product level where the provider publishes more than one |
| 15% | Setup and funding speed | Time to open the facility, scored separately from time to fund a repeat invoice |
| 10% | Contract flexibility | Minimum term, notice period, minimum usage, and whether selective funding is possible |
| 10% | Facility and product range | Factoring, discounting, selective, whole-ledger, asset-based lending and bad-debt protection |
| 5% | Published information transparency | How much of the eligibility and terms record the provider puts in public |
What qualifies a provider for inclusion. It must fund UK B2B invoices, publish enough on its own site for us to describe the product without guessing, and add something the other picks do not. That last test is why the list stops at seven. We excluded providers that only reach the market through brokers, and brokers presenting themselves as lenders, because a page about choosing a funder should compare funders.
How we handle conflicting information. Where two current official sources disagree, we say so and show both. Kriya is the live case: its own site sets a 12-month trading minimum with one filed set of accounts, while Allica’s Kriya page sets two years and two full years of accounts. Neither site says which governs which application route. We have not picked a side, because picking one would hand you a number that might be wrong on the day you apply.
What we did not do. We have not opened facilities with these providers, and nothing here is written as though we had. Where a provider publishes no rate (six of the seven), we have written “Quote required” rather than estimating one. Where a field is simply absent, it says so. That leaves visible gaps in the tables above, and we think the gaps are more useful than a tidy grid of invented numbers.
Commercial relationships. Some links on this page are affiliate links, and BusinessExpert may earn a commission if you apply through one. Inclusion, ordering and the “best for” labels are set by the criteria above and by nothing else. No provider paid for a place in this comparison, and no provider saw it before publication.
Is Invoice Finance Regulated?
Neither “invoice finance is regulated” nor “invoice finance is unregulated” is a safe thing to tell a business owner, and you will find both stated flatly across this market. The accurate position has three separate parts, and they are easy to run together.
The facility. UK Finance and the Professional Standards Council maintain an Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework, which has been running since 1 July 2013. It comprises the ABFA Code, the Standards Council itself, and an independent complaints process run by Ombudsman Services. The important word is voluntary: it binds UK Finance members who sign up to it, not the market at large. UK Finance’s own framework material is blunt about why it exists: factoring, invoice discounting and asset-based lending are not subject to statutory regulation in the UK, and the Financial Ombudsman Service will not currently consider complaints which primarily relate to those services.
The firm. Whether the FCA authorises the provider is a different question from whether it regulates your facility, and the distinction gets blurred in marketing. Close Brothers Group is a listed banking group, and Allica Bank, which acquired Kriya in October 2025, is a regulated bank. That authorisation covers the banking business those firms are authorised for. It does not convert an invoice finance agreement into a regulated product, and it does not give you the Ombudsman route that a regulated product would.
Your own position. How your business is constituted can change the answer. The consumer-credit perimeter is drawn around individuals, sole traders and small partnerships rather than companies, so a facility written to a sole trader is not automatically in the same regulatory place as the identical facility written to a limited company. It depends on how the agreement is structured and whether an exemption applies. If that distinction matters to you (and if you are a sole trader being asked for a personal guarantee, it should) ask the provider to state in writing whether the agreement is a regulated credit agreement, and whether it is covered by the UK Finance Standards Framework.
One thing that is not in doubt: FSCS deposit protection has nothing to do with any of this. It protects money you deposit with an authorised firm, up to £120,000. It does not protect a facility you borrow against.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which invoice finance company is best for small businesses?
It depends which wall you are hitting. If the problem is eligibility, Bibby Financial Services is the broadest door here and takes startups and sole traders. If the problem is turnover, Sonovate sets its floor at £50,000 a year and Skipton Business Finance says it has structured confidential discounting for businesses turning over as little as £100,000, well under the £2 million it names as the traditional bar. If you simply want one invoice funded without a facility, Triver is the selective option.
Which provider offers selective invoice finance?
Triver, Kriya and Sonovate. Triver is selective only, and publishes its price. Kriya offers selective alongside whole-ledger facilities and states there is no contract on the selective product. Sonovate works client by client and invoice by invoice. Bibby, Close Brothers and Skipton are whole-ledger propositions, so they cannot fund a single invoice.
Which invoice finance provider has the highest published advance rate?
Sonovate, which states it pays 100% of the invoice, though it is built for recruitment and labour supply rather than general trading. Among the general providers, Ultimate Finance publishes up to 95%, and Bibby publishes up to 95% on invoice discounting against up to 85% on factoring. Close Brothers, Kriya and Skipton all publish up to 90%. Treat a headline advance with care: none of these providers except Triver publishes what it charges, so a high advance tells you nothing about the cost of the money.
How quickly can invoice finance be set up?
These are two different questions, and providers rarely separate them. Setting up the facility takes minutes with Triver, about 24 hours with Sonovate after the first appointment, a week with Ultimate Finance, and roughly a fortnight with Close Brothers, which has to underwrite your debtor book first. Once the facility exists, funding an invoice is much faster: under two minutes at Triver, 12 to 24 hours at Kriya, and within 24 hours at Bibby, Close Brothers and Ultimate Finance. Bibby and Skipton do not publish a setup time.
Is invoice finance confidential?
That depends on the product, not the provider. Invoice discounting is confidential: you carry on collecting and your customers deal only with you. Factoring is disclosed, because the funder collects and your customers hear from them. Bibby, Close Brothers and Ultimate Finance all offer both, so the choice is yours. Skipton offers confidential and disclosed discounting. Triver, Kriya and Sonovate do not publish a disclosure position, so ask before you sign.
Do invoice finance companies require long contracts?
Whole-ledger facilities normally carry a minimum term and a notice period to exit. That is the trade for the lower cost per pound. What is striking is how few providers publish the terms: of the seven here, only Triver, Kriya and Sonovate state their position, and all three say there is no long-term commitment. Bibby, Close Brothers, Ultimate Finance and Skipton publish neither a contract length nor a notice period, so you will only see them in the agreement.
How much does invoice finance cost?
Two charges, usually. A service charge covers running the facility and, with factoring, the credit control. A discount charge is the cost of the money while the invoice is outstanding. Only Triver publishes a rate: 0.06% a day, with a minimum charge of ten days’ fees. Everyone else quotes. On a £50,000 invoice with £42,500 advanced for 60 days, Triver’s published rate works out at £1,530. Our worked example above sets that against a whole-ledger model, and says plainly which figures are ours.
Is invoice finance regulated in the UK?
Not in the way consumer credit is, and a blanket answer either way would be wrong. UK Finance and the Professional Standards Council run an Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework, in operation since 1 July 2013, but it is voluntary. UK Finance’s own framework material states that factoring, invoice discounting and asset-based lending are not subject to statutory regulation, and that the Financial Ombudsman Service will not currently consider complaints which primarily relate to these services. Some providers are owned by regulated banks (Close Brothers and Allica, which owns Kriya), but that authorises the firm for its banking business. It does not make the facility a regulated product.
We compiled this comparison by reading each provider’s own product, eligibility and pricing pages, alongside UK Finance material on the Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework and Bank of England Bank Rate data. Every provider fact was checked on 21 August 2026 and carries a source and an evidence status in its provider block. Where a provider publishes no rate (standard practice in this market), we say so rather than estimating.
Provider selection reflects the range of facility types (selective against whole-ledger, factoring against discounting) and eligibility profiles open to UK businesses. The full weighting and inclusion rules are set out in How We Ranked the Providers.
Invoice finance rates are negotiated case by case. Request a written illustration, including the minimum term, the notice period and any minimum usage, before committing to a facility.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you apply through one, BusinessExpert may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This does not influence provider selection, ordering or our editorial conclusions. See our editorial policy for details.