Close Brothers Invoice Finance Review (2026): Rates, Eligibility and Verdict

Close Brothers Invoice Finance advances up to 90% of an invoice’s value, and on its standard factoring and invoice discounting pages it asks for a minimum turnover of £750,000 a year. Those two figures are published, current and checkable. Almost nothing else about the cost of the facility is. Close Brothers explains how it charges (a service fee on your gross turnover, a discount fee on your daily outstanding balance), but publishes no percentage for either, and says plainly that every agreement is individually priced.

That gap is the reason this review exists in the form it does. Several comparison sites quote Close Brothers rates from 0.5%, minimum turnovers of £50,000, and five-day setups. None of those numbers appear anywhere on Close Brothers’ own current pages, and we could not source them. Where the provider publishes a figure we give it to you with its date. Where it does not, we say so and tell you which document settles it, because a number nobody is bound by is worse than no number at all.

The other thing worth knowing before you read on is that the £750,000 threshold is not the whole story. In August 2025 Close Brothers launched a Scale Up team for start-ups and smaller SMEs, with facilities up to £350,000. Growth Guarantee Scheme invoice finance facilities can start at £1,000. If a previous version of this page, or a rival’s, told you that £500,000 was the gate and that below it you were out, that was wrong. We have corrected it here, and we have said so at the foot of the page rather than quietly overwriting it.

Close Brothers Invoice Finance at a Glance

Our Verdict

Close Brothers suits an established B2B business that wants its whole sales ledger funded by a lender with a bank’s balance sheet behind it, and that expects to need stock, plant or property funding later. The route from invoice finance into asset-based lending sits inside one organisation, which matters more than it sounds: refinancing a growing facility to a different lender is expensive and slow, and avoiding that is worth real money.

The cost of that is opacity at the shopping stage. You cannot price a Close Brothers facility from its website, because the website does not price it. You will spend time in a discovery call and a ledger survey before you see a number, and the number you eventually see is yours alone. My advice is to treat that as a procurement exercise rather than a sales conversation, and to run at least one other lender through the same brief on the same day, so the quote you get has something to sit beside.

Where I would hesitate is at the smaller end. Close Brothers now has a Scale Up route and a Growth Guarantee Scheme route that between them reach a long way below the headline £750,000, and that is a genuine improvement. But a smaller business is buying into a relationship-led, whole-ledger model with a survey attached, and if what you actually need is one invoice funded this week, this is the wrong shape of product regardless of which team picks up the phone.

Best For

• Established B2B businesses at or above £750,000 turnover with a spread of trade debtors
• Companies that expect to outgrow pure invoice finance and want stock, plant or property funding from the same lender
• Manufacturers, wholesalers, recruiters and engineering firms invoicing on credit terms against completed work
• Businesses that want a named relationship manager and will use one
• Start-ups and smaller SMEs willing to be routed to the Scale Up team, or to a Growth Guarantee Scheme facility, rather than the standard product

Not Ideal For

• Anyone who needs to fund a single invoice and walk away: Close Brothers’ published products all fund the ledger, not one debtor
• Businesses selling to consumers rather than to other businesses
• Companies that need cash inside a week, before a facility exists
• Buyers who want to compare on price from a website, because there is no price on the website to compare
• Businesses with one customer carrying most of the ledger, where concentration will cap the funding well below the headline advance

Key Facts: Verified 25 August 2026

Every figure below comes from a Close Brothers page, a government source or a regulator, read on 25 August 2026. We have given each one its evidence position, because on this product the difference between a published maximum and a quoted term is the difference between a fact and a hope, and only one of the two will appear in your agreement.

What Close Brothers Publishes and What Only a Quote Will Tell You

This is the table we would keep open while reading anyone else’s review of the same lender, ours included. The left column is what Close Brothers stands behind in public. The right column is what it does not publish at all, and where you will find someone else’s estimate filling the space if you are not careful.

Seven of those ten rows are blank on the provider’s side. That is normal for invoice finance and it is not a criticism of Close Brothers specifically: its published disclosure is better than several rivals, and the fee page explains the charging method more clearly than most. It does mean that any site telling you Close Brothers charges a particular percentage is telling you something Close Brothers has not said.

How Much of an Invoice Will Close Brothers Advance?

Up to 90%, and Close Brothers says the same thing on all three of its main product pages: more consistency than we usually find in this market. The invoice discounting page, the factoring page and the umbrella invoice finance page each state that it pays up to 90% of the value of each invoice the instant you raise it. There is no second, higher figure hiding on a different page, and no separate advance rate for factoring and discounting.

Invoice Factoring: Up to 90%

The factoring page states that the facility “releases up to 90% of the value of your unpaid invoices the moment you issue them to your customers”. Factoring here is disclosed and includes credit control: Close Brothers takes over collections, and your customers know a finance provider is involved. For a business running its ledger on a part-time bookkeeper, handing the chasing to someone whose full-time job it is can be worth more than the advance rate.

Invoice Discounting: Up to 90%

Same headline, different operating model. Invoice discounting is confidential, you keep credit control, and your customers deal only with you. The discounting page states the same up to 90% and adds the eligibility criteria: business-to-business invoices, a minimum turnover of £750,000 a year, and a willingness to finance the whole ledger rather than select invoices. Because Close Brothers is relying on your reporting rather than doing the collections itself, the survey before you start is more demanding on a discounting facility than on a factoring one.

If you have not settled which of the two you want, our guide to invoice factoring versus invoice discounting works through the trade-off in more detail than a provider review sensibly can.

Liquidity Plus: Up to 100% on Invoice Discounting

Liquidity Plus is the one place a higher number appears, and it is worth understanding exactly what it is before you carry it into a comparison. Close Brothers describes it as a product used alongside an existing invoice discounting facility “when you need an immediate cash injection to your working capital”, topping the facility up to 100% prepayment against invoice value. It is available to limited companies only, and subject to qualifying criteria the company does not publish.

So the honest reading is that Close Brothers’ standard advance is 90% and there is a conditional route to 100% on one product, for one company type, if you qualify. That is not the same as a 100% advance rate, and it should not be entered into a comparison table as one.

Why You Will See 90%, 100% and Other Figures Quoted Online

Three different numbers circulate for Close Brothers and each has a different origin. The 90% is the published maximum on the ordinary products. The 100% comes from two places: Liquidity Plus on invoice discounting, and the Scale Up team, whose August 2025 launch described prepayments of up to 100% for start-ups and smaller SMEs. Both are real, both are conditional, and we would not enter either into a comparison as the standard offer.

The third category is figures with no provider source at all. Several comparison sites publish Close Brothers service charges starting at 0.5%, minimum turnovers of £50,000, and setup in five working days. We checked the factoring, discounting, invoice finance, fees, bad debt protection, Liquidity Plus, asset-based lending and Growth Guarantee Scheme pages on 25 August 2026 and found none of those figures on any of them.

We cannot tell you where they came from: old copy, a broker’s experience, or market convention are all possible. What we can tell you is that they are not Close Brothers’ published terms, and a review presenting them as such is handing you a number the lender never agreed to.

Headline Advance vs Cash You Can Actually Draw

This is the part that catches people out, and it has nothing to do with Close Brothers in particular. The 90% is a percentage of approved eligible debt, not of your sales ledger. Between the invoice you raise and the money in your account sits a series of deductions, and if you build a cash flow forecast on 90% of your ledger you will be wrong by a wide margin.

The chain runs like this. Start with the gross sales ledger. Remove anything the facility does not fund: consumer invoices, intercompany billing, debtors in territories outside the agreement, and any customer Close Brothers has declined to approve. Remove invoices older than the agreed ageing limit, typically counted from invoice date. Remove anything in dispute, and net off credit notes.

Then come the caps. Apply the concentration cap, which limits how much of the funded ledger any one customer can represent. If a single debtor sits above it, the excess comes out. Apply any reserves the agreement provides for. What is left is approved eligible debt. Ninety per cent of that is your funding line. Subtract what you have already drawn, and you have the cash available today.

Work an example. A ledger of £1m sounds like £900,000 of funding. Take out £120,000 of invoices past the ageing limit, £40,000 in dispute and credit notes, and £90,000 of concentration excess where one customer runs well above the cap, and eligible debt is £750,000. Ninety per cent of that is £675,000. If £500,000 is already drawn, today’s availability is £175,000, not £900,000. Those deduction figures are ours for illustration and not Close Brothers’: the point is the shape of the calculation, not the numbers in it. Our guide to how advance rates work covers the same ground for any provider.

The practical consequence is that the concentration cap and the ageing limit deserve as much attention in your Offer Letter as the advance percentage does, and they attract far less. Close Brothers does not publish either. Ask for both in writing, and ask what happens to availability if your largest customer stretches from 45 days to 75.

How Much Does Close Brothers Invoice Finance Cost?

Does Close Brothers Publish Its Rates?

No, and it says so directly. The fees page states that “all of our invoice finance agreements are individually priced” and that “all of the fees relating to your account will be disclosed with you when your facility is arranged”. The factoring and discounting pages carry the same message: “as we tailor a solution to meet the needs of your business, your agreement will be individually priced”.

We have not obtained a Close Brothers quotation, and we are not going to substitute a market average for one and call it a rate. Anyone who tells you Close Brothers charges between 0.75% and 2.5% is quoting the UK invoice finance market, not this lender. The figure might turn out to be near your quote. It is not evidence, and it does not belong in a table headed “Close Brothers pricing”.

How Invoice Finance Charging Works

Close Brothers does publish the charging structure, clearly, and understanding it is what lets you read a quote when you get one. There are two charges and they do different jobs.

The service fee, in Close Brothers’ words, “covers the delivery costs of your facility, including the management and admin costs related to your account”, and “is charged as a percentage of your gross turnover”. Note what it applies to: turnover put through the facility, not the amount you borrow. It is payable whether you draw the money or not, which makes it the charge that determines whether a facility is worth having in a quiet quarter.

The discount fee “is the cost of the money you draw down, which will be affected by how long it takes your customers to pay their outstanding invoices”, and “is charged against your daily outstanding balance”. This one behaves like interest on an overdraft. It accrues only on drawn funds, only for the days they are drawn, and it falls when your customers pay faster. The two charges therefore respond to completely different things, which is why comparing lenders on either one alone tells you very little.

The Fees to Check in Your Offer Letter

Close Brothers publishes nothing about the charges below. That is not unusual, and it is not evidence that they apply, but every one of them is standard somewhere in this market, and each is easier to negotiate before you sign than after.

• Arrangement or facility fee. A one-off charge at the start. Ask whether it is a flat sum or a percentage of the facility limit.
• Minimum monthly or annual service fee. The one that bites hardest. It sets a floor under the service fee regardless of the turnover you actually put through, so a bad quarter costs you the same as a good one.
• Audit or survey fees. Charged for the periodic ledger reviews. Ask how often, and how much each time.
• Refactoring or disapproval charges. Applied when an invoice ages past the agreed limit and comes out of the funded pool.
• Termination or early settlement fee. What leaving costs, and how it is calculated.
• Transaction, CHAPS and same-day payment charges. Small individually. Not small across a year of drawdowns.

Ask for the full schedule in one document. A lender that gives you the service fee and the discount margin over the phone but sends the rest later is not being dishonest, but you cannot price the facility from the first two numbers, and you should not try.

Worked Example: Calculating the All-In Annual Cost

The method below is a BusinessExpert calculation on assumed inputs. The rates in it are our assumptions for the purpose of showing the arithmetic. They are not Close Brothers’ rates, and Close Brothers has not published rates we could use instead.

Take a business turning over £2m a year, with an average drawn balance of £250,000 across the year. We have used round numbers deliberately, so the shape of the arithmetic stays visible. Assume a service fee of 1.2% of gross turnover and a discount margin of 3% over a 4% base rate, so 7% on drawn funds. The service fee costs £24,000 for the year, because it applies to the full £2m of turnover put through the facility. The discount fee costs £17,500, because it applies to the £250,000 actually drawn. Add an arrangement fee of £2,000 and audit fees of £1,500, and the all-in first-year cost is £45,000.

What that arithmetic shows is where the money goes. The service fee is more than half the total, and it is driven by turnover, which you cannot reduce without shrinking the business. The discount fee is the smaller number, and it is the one most quotes lead with. If you compare two lenders on discount margin alone you can pick the more expensive facility and never see it.

Run the same model on your own turnover and your own realistic drawn balance before you take a quote to your board. Our invoice finance fees comparison sets out the same method with the market’s typical fee shapes alongside.

How to Compare a Close Brothers Quote With Another Provider

Normalise everything to one number: total pounds over twelve months, on the same assumed turnover and the same assumed average drawn balance. That is the only comparison that survives contact with two different fee structures.

Four things make quotes look different when they are not. Make sure both are quoting the same product, because factoring includes credit control and discounting does not, and the service fee reflects that. Make sure both discount margins sit over the same reference rate, since base rate and SONIA are not interchangeable. Include the minimum fee in both, not just the headline percentage. And check both advance rates are quoted against approved eligible debt rather than the gross ledger.

Do not convert the result into an APR. Invoice finance is not a term loan, the balance revolves, and an annualised percentage rate on a facility whose drawn balance moves daily produces a figure that looks authoritative and means nothing. Compare the pounds.

Close Brothers Invoice Finance Eligibility

Who Can Apply

UK business-to-business companies invoicing other businesses on credit terms. Close Brothers’ factoring and discounting pages set out three criteria between them: your invoices are raised to other businesses, your turnover is at least £750,000 a year, and you are interested in financing all your invoices rather than selecting individual ones. That last condition rules out a whole category of buyer before turnover is even discussed, and it is the one people miss.

Selling to consumers takes you outside the product entirely, whatever your turnover. So does wanting to fund one invoice from one customer, at least on the published products: Close Brothers does not advertise a selective or spot facility. If that is what you need, our guides to selective invoice finance and spot factoring cover the providers that do offer it.

Does Close Brothers Have a Minimum Turnover?

There is no single threshold that covers every Close Brothers route, and this is where we think most reviews of this lender go wrong. The standard factoring and invoice discounting pages both state a minimum turnover of £750,000 a year. That figure is published, it is current, and it applies to those two products only. It is not a company-wide floor, and the £500,000 that circulates on comparison sites (including on an earlier version of this page) is not a figure Close Brothers publishes anywhere.

What actually determines your route is which team handles you, and Close Brothers set that out when it launched the Scale Up unit in August 2025. Scale Up covers start-ups and smaller SMEs with facilities up to £350,000. The Commercial team handles facilities from £350,000 to £3m. The Corporate and asset-based lending division handles structured deals up to £65m. The £750,000 turnover criterion attaches to the standard published products, and Scale Up exists precisely to serve businesses that do not meet it.

Read that table as four doors rather than a ladder. A £200,000-turnover start-up that would be turned away from the standard product should be asking about Scale Up or a Growth Guarantee Scheme facility rather than assuming Close Brothers is closed to it. A £1m established B2B company sits squarely inside the published criterion, subject to underwriting. An £8m manufacturer that needs stock funding as well as receivables should be talking to the asset-based lending team from the first call, not arriving there in two years’ time.

What Close Brothers Assesses at Underwriting

Meeting the published criteria gets you a conversation, not a facility. Close Brothers does not publish its underwriting criteria, which is normal, but we can describe the shape of the assessment from what the facility has to be secured against.

The ledger itself carries most of the weight. Who your customers are, what they are worth, how promptly they pay, and how much of your revenue depends on any one of them. Debtor concentration is the quiet test that decides more applications than turnover does: if one customer is most of your ledger, that customer’s credit standing effectively becomes yours, and the funding will be capped accordingly.

Your own accounts and management information matter too, and more so on a discounting facility, where Close Brothers is funding against numbers you produce rather than collections it controls. Expect a survey (remote or on site) in which an analyst works through the ledger, the invoicing workflow and the credit control process.

Sector shapes the answer as well. Construction is fundable, but applications for payment, retentions and pay-when-paid clauses all complicate what counts as an eligible invoice, and our guide to invoice finance for construction explains why. Recruitment has the opposite profile: high volume, short cycles, and a well-understood risk, which is why recruitment agencies are among the heaviest users of this product.

Start-Ups and Newer Businesses

Two routes exist and both are worth asking about by name. Scale Up is the first: launched in August 2025 specifically for start-ups and smaller SMEs, with facilities up to £350,000, prepayments of up to 100%, and access to the same IDeal platform the larger facilities use. Close Brothers has not published a minimum turnover for it, and the absence of a published number is not the same as a low one: it means the answer comes from underwriting.

The second is the Growth Guarantee Scheme, and its numbers are published because the British Business Bank sets them. Invoice finance facilities under the scheme can start at £1,000, which is a genuinely different order of magnitude from £750,000. Eligibility runs on group turnover of up to £45m, UK trading activity with more than half of income from trading, a viable business proposition in the lender’s assessment, and not being a business in difficulty.

One thing about the scheme matters more than the rest, and it is regularly misunderstood. The 70% guarantee protects the lender, not you. In the British Business Bank’s own words, “the borrower always remains 100% liable for the debt”. A guaranteed facility may be available where an unguaranteed one is not, but it does not reduce what you owe by a penny, and anyone implying otherwise is misreading the scheme. Our Growth Guarantee Scheme guide sets out the full rules.

Close Brothers’ Invoice Finance Products

Invoice Factoring

Disclosed finance with credit control included. Close Brothers advances up to 90% when you raise the invoice, then manages the sales ledger and collects from your customers, who know the facility exists. The saving is a real one for a smaller finance function (you are buying a collections team as well as cash), and the cost is that your customers deal with your lender. Some businesses regard that as normal commercial practice and some regard it as a signal they would rather not send. Our guide to factoring and credit control covers what the lender actually does on your behalf.

Invoice Discounting

Confidential finance with credit control retained. Same 90% maximum, same £750,000 turnover criterion, but your customers never learn a funder is involved and you keep the collections work. It demands more of your internal finance function, and the survey before you start reflects that. It is also the only route to Liquidity Plus. If you want the mechanics in isolation, our invoice discounting guide goes further than a provider review should.

Liquidity Plus

A top-up that takes an existing invoice discounting facility to up to 100% prepayment, described by Close Brothers as being for when you need an immediate cash injection to working capital. It is limited to limited companies and subject to qualifying criteria that are not published. Treat it as a facility you might be granted, not a headline advance rate, and ask what it costs, because a higher prepayment on the same ledger is more borrowed money, not free money.

Bad Debt Protection

Close Brothers offers up to 100% protection on customers pre-approved by its bad debt protection team, covering the situation where a customer cannot settle its invoices. Cover is available with either factoring or invoice discounting, for UK businesses including Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and applications are subject to the usual sales ledger credit assessment. Protection applies only to customers assessed and approved in advance, so a customer you take on next month is not covered until they have been through that process.

Close Brothers is also running a three-months-free promotion on this product, and its terms are worth separating carefully from the product itself. To take the free period you sign “a minimum 18 month contract plus six month notice period”, and bad debt protection charges are not applied for three calendar months from facility commencement. Those are the promotion’s conditions, published under the heading “Promotion terms and conditions”, and Close Brothers reserves the right to end the offer at any time without notice. They are not the standard terms of the product, and they are certainly not the terms of your underlying invoice finance facility.

Whether the cover is worth its price turns on your ledger shape. For a business with two customers it could not survive losing, it is close to essential. For a well-spread ledger of small accounts, the money is usually better kept. Our guide to recourse versus non-recourse invoice finance works through where the line falls.

Asset-Based Lending

The reason a growing business chooses Close Brothers over a pure invoice finance house. The asset-based lending division funds between £1m and £65m against a combination of receivables, property, stock, plant and machinery, and is aimed at businesses with annual turnover above £5m. Up to 90% prepayment applies on the receivables element, with the other asset classes funded alongside.

The practical value is continuity. A business that outgrows a receivables-only line usually has to refinance to a lender that can fund stock as well, and refinancing a working capital facility is disruptive, slow and expensive. Having that step available inside the same organisation is worth paying something for, and it is the clearest structural advantage Close Brothers has over most of its competitors.

The Growth Guarantee Scheme

Close Brothers is an accredited lender under the Growth Guarantee Scheme, and offers invoice finance facilities under it from £1,000, up to a general maximum of £2m per business group. Eligibility is set by the British Business Bank rather than by Close Brothers: group turnover up to £45m, UK trading activity with more than 50% of income from trading, a viable proposition, not a business in difficulty, and confirmation that you will not exceed subsidy limits.

The scheme changes what a lender is willing to do, not what you owe. The government guarantee covers 70% of the outstanding balance and is given to the lender. You remain fully liable for the whole debt. That is worth restating in the room if anyone in your business is treating a scheme-backed facility as partly underwritten on your side.

Personal Guarantees, Security and Contract Terms

Does Close Brothers Require a Personal Guarantee?

Close Brothers does not publish an answer to this, and we are not going to invent one. We checked its factoring, discounting, invoice finance, terms and conditions and product pages on 25 August 2026, and we found no statement either way.

What we can tell you is what is circulating and where it comes from. Several comparison sites state that Close Brothers requires a personal guarantee below a particular facility size, or waives it for stronger debtors. We found no provider source behind any of them, and they sit on the same pages as turnover and rate figures that contradict Close Brothers’ own current material. So we are not repeating them as terms.

Ask the question yourself, then. Put it at the discovery call, before the survey, and get the answer into the Offer Letter rather than an email. Ask three things: whether directors are asked for a personal guarantee, whether it is capped and at what figure, and what security is taken over the company: a debenture and a fixed charge over the receivables are standard in this market. A guarantee that is unlimited and one that is capped at £50,000 are entirely different commitments, and the difference will not be visible in a rate.

Minimum Fees, Notice Periods and Renewal

Close Brothers publishes no minimum term, notice period or minimum fee for its standard invoice finance facility. The 12-month rolling contract with 30 to 90 days’ notice that appeared on an earlier version of this page had no provider source, and we have removed it rather than leave it standing.

The only minimum term and notice period Close Brothers publishes anywhere sit in the small print of a three-months-free promotion on bad debt protection: an 18-month contract plus six months’ notice, to qualify for that offer. It is a different product, on promotional terms the company can withdraw at will, and it is not evidence about your facility.

So the notice period on your facility is whatever your Offer Letter says, and it is negotiable in a way that rates often are not. A shorter notice period on a facility you may want to leave is worth asking for explicitly, and it costs nothing to ask.

Termination and Exit Costs

Also unpublished, and the clause where the expensive surprises live. Across this market we see exit charges calculated from the remaining minimum service fee over the balance of the term, which means the cost of leaving can be a multiple of what you expected.

The reason it matters is not academic. If you find a cheaper facility in eighteen months, the termination cost is what decides whether moving is worth it, and a business that has not read the clause discovers the number at the worst possible moment. Ask for a worked figure at the quote stage: what would it cost, in pounds, to terminate in month six, month twelve and month twenty-four. A lender that will not put that in writing has told you something useful.

What to Confirm in the Offer Letter Before You Sign

• The service fee percentage, and whether a minimum monthly or annual fee sits under it
• The discount margin, and the reference rate it is quoted over
• Every other fee in one schedule: arrangement, audit, refactoring, transaction and same-day payment charges
• The advance percentage, and confirmation that it applies to approved eligible debt
• The concentration cap on any single debtor
• The ageing limit, and the date it counts from
• Minimum term, notice period, and the termination cost worked in pounds at three points in the term
• Whether a personal guarantee is required, whether it is capped, and what security is taken over the company
• Whether bad debt protection is included, and which customers are pre-approved

How Quickly Can You Get Funding?

Application and Underwriting

Close Brothers does not publish an application-to-decision time, and the honest answer is that it depends almost entirely on how ready your ledger is. The process runs through an enquiry, a discovery call with a relationship manager to scope whether factoring or discounting fits, and then a survey of the ledger, the invoicing workflow and the credit control process.

Have your last two years of filed accounts, current management accounts, an aged debtor and aged creditor report, recent invoices with the contracts behind them, bank statements, director identification and a breakdown of your top customers ready before the first call, and you remove most of the delay that is within your control.

First Drawdown

Close Brothers’ invoice finance page states that once approved and onboarded, “money is often available within a couple of weeks”. We read that as provider guidance rather than a commitment: “often” is doing real work in that sentence, and the clock starts at approval, not at enquiry. The five-day setup that appears on some comparison sites does not come from Close Brothers and we could not source it.

The practical implication is the one worth acting on. This is a facility you arrange ahead of need. If a VAT bill lands in ten days and you have not started, invoice finance from a relationship lender will not solve it, and knowing that now is more useful than discovering it in a fortnight.

Funding Once the Facility Is Live

Faster, and this is where the product earns its keep. Close Brothers states that once the facility is running, “cash is typically advanced within 24 hours” of submitting eligible invoices. The factoring and discounting pages go further, describing payment of up to 90% “the instant” invoices are raised, through the IDeal platform.

IDeal is the client platform, and it integrates with accounting software so invoices flow through without rekeying. Close Brothers publishes two different counts for how many packages: the invoice finance page says over 400, while the invoice discounting page says 285, including Xero, Sage and QuickBooks. We are not going to pick one, because we have no basis for preferring either. If integration with your specific system is part of the decision, name the package and get the answer confirmed rather than relying on either headline.

Close Brothers Invoice Finance Customer Reviews

Trustpilot Rating: Checked 25 August 2026

Close Brothers holds 3.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 7,289 reviews, checked on 25 August 2026. The distribution matters more than the average: 71% are five-star and 22% are one-star, with only 7% spread across the middle three bands. That is not a mediocre business. That is two populations having completely different experiences, and an average of 3.6 describes neither of them.

What Customers Praise

We read the positive reviews as clustering around process: applications that were more straightforward than expected, staff who stayed in contact, and decisions that arrived without chasing. Trustpilot’s own summary of recent reviews describes reviewers as somewhat happy overall and repeatedly mentions car finance applications being straightforward and the team being supportive through the process.

What Complaints Recur

The one-star fifth complains about service delays, communication after the sale, and account administration. Trustpilot’s breakdown of what people discuss most returns the same word for service, customer service, staff, payment and response time: ambiguous, with reviewers reporting sharply differing experiences on every one. Close Brothers has replied to 96% of negative reviews, which is a high rate and one we think is worth crediting.

How Much Weight to Give the Score

Very little, for this decision, and the reason is scope rather than sentiment. That profile covers Close Brothers as a group. The reviews Trustpilot itself surfaces as representative are about financing a car, a motorbike and a Range Rover. Close Brothers Motor Finance serves hundreds of thousands of consumers; Close Brothers Invoice Finance serves a few thousand businesses. The score is dominated by a different product, bought by different customers, for different reasons.

So we do not treat it as evidence about the invoice finance division, and it is certainly not evidence about pricing, eligibility or contract terms. Anyone presenting a group Trustpilot score as a rating for this facility is measuring the wrong thing. If you want a read on what the invoice finance team is like to deal with, ask the relationship manager for two client references in your sector and call them. That is a slower method and a much better one.

One group-level fact does belong on a CFO’s file, separately from the reviews. Close Brothers Group has set aside around £320m against historic motor finance commission redress, after the FCA’s policy statement on its industry-wide consumer redress scheme, with payments expected to run from summer 2026 to the end of 2027. The group has said that charge would reduce its CET1 capital ratio by roughly 25 basis points to 14.0%, still above its 12–13% medium-term target range.

We think that is a live matter at the parent, and a business signing a multi-year funding relationship is entitled to know about it. It is also, read properly, a point in Close Brothers’ favour on the question that matters here: a lender absorbing a £320m provision and remaining capitalised above its own target range is demonstrating the balance sheet depth that is the main reason to choose it. We found no evidence connecting the motor finance issue to invoice finance clients.

Is Close Brothers Invoice Finance Safe, Regulated and Who Do You Complain To?

What Close Brothers’ FCA Registration Actually Covers

Start with who you are actually contracting with, because three different names appear on this deal and only one of them is your counterparty. Close Brothers Invoice Finance is a trading style. The legal entity behind it is Close Invoice Finance Limited, company number 00935949, registered at 10 Crown Place, London EC2A 4FT: a company incorporated on 24 July 1968 and known as Century Factors Limited until 1991. That is the company that will sign your facility agreement.

Above it sits Close Brothers Limited, company number 00195626, which is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the PRA under firm reference number 124750. Note those two numbers carefully, because they are the source of a mistake that has spread across this topic, including on an earlier version of this page, which gave the FCA reference as 195626. That is Close Brothers Limited’s Companies House number, not its FCA firm reference. The correct firm reference number is 124750.

Now the part that actually affects you. Close Brothers Limited’s authorisation covers the regulated activities Close Brothers Limited is authorised for. It does not make your invoice finance facility a regulated product. Commercial invoice finance provided to a business is generally outside the FCA’s conduct rules, because the borrower is a company rather than a consumer, and no amount of parent-company authorisation changes that.

Two consequences follow, and they are the ones to hold on to. The Financial Ombudsman Service route that a consumer borrower would have is not generally available to you for this facility. And the Financial Services Compensation Scheme does not apply: it protects deposits placed with an authorised firm, and an invoice finance facility is money you are borrowing, not money you have deposited. A lender being part of an authorised banking group tells you something real about its financial strength. It tells you nothing about your rights if the relationship goes wrong.

UK Finance Membership and the IF/ABL Standards Framework

The framework that does apply to commercial invoice finance is the UK Finance Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework. It is a voluntary industry arrangement rather than statutory regulation, comprising the IF/ABL Code, an independent Professional Standards Council, and an independent complaints process. Members commit to acting in accordance with it.

There is a wrinkle here worth flagging, because it changes what you should ask. Close Invoice Finance Limited’s own terms and conditions page currently states that the company “is a member of the Asset Based Finance Association”. ABFA has not existed as a separate body since 1 July 2017, when it was integrated into UK Finance. The reference is a legacy one, and it is the provider’s own page carrying it, not a competitor’s.

We could not confirm Close Invoice Finance Limited’s current IF/ABL section membership from UK Finance’s published material, whose member directory does not expose section membership in a form we could read on 25 August 2026. So we would rather you did not take membership on trust from anybody, ourselves included. Ask Close Brothers to confirm in writing that the contracting entity (Close Invoice Finance Limited, not the parent) is a current UK Finance IF/ABL member, and get it before you sign. The next section explains why that one line of confirmation is worth insisting on.

How to Complain, and the CEDR Route

The independent complaints process under the Standards Framework is run by CEDR, and it is available to clients of IF/ABL members: UK Finance’s own wording is that it covers “the majority” of them, so membership is the gateway and eligibility is not automatic even then. That is precisely why the written confirmation above matters: without member status, this route is not open to you and the Financial Ombudsman Service generally is not either.

The route itself runs in three steps, with real deadlines. Complain formally to Close Brothers first and give it the chance to respond, and do that within 12 months of the issue arising. Once you have its final response or a deadlock letter, register the complaint with UK Finance within six months: complaints brought more than six months after a deadlock letter are not normally accepted. CEDR then adjudicates and issues a final decision within 90 days of receiving the complete file.

The award limit we found is £50,000 for matters arising on or after 1 January 2021, and £28,000 for anything earlier. The decision is final and there is no appeal. Set that against a seven-figure funding line and you can see the limits of the protection: this is a route for a service or conduct dispute, not a backstop for a commercial loss on a facility of any size. It is worth knowing before you need it, and worth checking you are eligible for while you can still walk away.

Close Brothers vs the Alternatives

Close Brothers vs Bibby Financial Services

Bibby is the larger independent specialist and reaches further down the market. It publishes two separate advance maxima (up to 85% on factoring and up to 95% on invoice discounting) against Close Brothers’ single up to 90% across both, and it has developed sector products for construction and recruitment that Close Brothers does not advertise as named products.

Close Brothers’ advantage is the asset-based lending division above it. If your funding need is going to include stock or plant within a couple of years, staying inside one lender avoids a refinancing you would otherwise have to run. Neither publishes rates, so we cannot compare them on price from public sources, and anyone who offers you that comparison is estimating. Our Bibby Financial Services review covers its published terms in the same detail as this page.

Close Brothers vs Aldermore Invoice Finance

Aldermore is a challenger bank, so both are bank-backed and the balance sheet argument does not separate them the way it separates Close Brothers from an independent. The distinction we would draw is scale and complexity. Close Brothers’ published ladder runs from Scale Up facilities to £65m asset-based deals, which is a wider span than most, and its corporate division is built for messy ledgers: retentions, stage payments, applications for payment.

For a clean services business at the lower end of the range, that depth is capacity you are not using. Get both to quote on the same brief on the same day. Our Aldermore invoice finance review sets out what Aldermore publishes.

Close Brothers vs Skipton Business Finance

Skipton is a smaller, service-led provider with a reputation for personal contact and flexibility on smaller facilities, and it is a genuine alternative for an owner-managed business that finds larger institutions slow. Close Brothers has the deeper product set, particularly bad debt protection and the route into asset-based lending.

Neither publishes pricing, so we have not ranked them on cost and we would treat any source that does with suspicion. The test we would use is to send both the same brief, ask both for the complete fee schedule and the termination clause in writing, and compare the two documents rather than the two conversations.

Which Type of Provider Is Likely to Suit You

Three shapes of lender serve this market and they suit different businesses. A bank-owned lender like Close Brothers or Aldermore brings balance sheet depth and a path into wider asset-based facilities, at the cost of a slower, more formal process. An independent specialist like Bibby or Skipton tends to be quicker to engage and more flexible at the smaller end, with a narrower ceiling. A digital-first provider (Kriya and others) will fund faster and often on selected invoices rather than the whole ledger, which is the right answer if your need is occasional rather than structural.

Of those three shapes, we would put Close Brothers first for one specific profile: a growing B2B business that wants its whole ledger funded now and expects to need more than receivables funding later. If that is not you, one of the other shapes probably fits better. Our roundup of the best invoice finance companies compares the field on published terms.

If you would rather not approach lenders one at a time, Tide Funding Options is a broker rather than a funder: one enquiry, and it comes back with the invoice finance providers likely to consider your ledger. On a whole-ledger facility that is a reasonable way to find out who will look at you before you commit to a survey, though you will still need the written fee schedule and the termination clause from whoever it puts in front of you.

Verdict: Is Close Brothers Invoice Finance Worth It?

Yes, for an established B2B business that wants a whole-ledger facility from a lender with a bank behind it and a route into asset-based lending ahead of it. We find the published terms solid (up to 90% advance, a clearly explained two-part fee structure, funding typically within 24 hours once the facility is live), and the Scale Up and Growth Guarantee Scheme routes mean the £750,000 criterion on the standard products is no longer the wall it is usually described as.

Our reservation is not about the lender’s quality. It is that you cannot evaluate this facility from the outside. Close Brothers publishes no rate, no minimum fee, no notice period, no termination cost, no concentration cap and no position on personal guarantees, and those six unknowns are collectively worth far more than the advance percentage everyone compares. We read that as the market’s convention rather than this lender’s failing, and Close Brothers is more transparent than several rivals about how it charges. But it means the quote is the product, and until you have one you have not seen what you are buying.

So the recommendation is conditional in a way I would not usually make it. Shortlist Close Brothers if the profile above is yours, then treat the application as procurement: same brief to at least one other lender, full fee schedule in writing from both, termination cost worked in pounds, and written confirmation that the contracting entity is a current UK Finance IF/ABL member. With those four documents on the table the decision is straightforward. Without them, an attractive headline rate is not information.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the minimum turnover for Close Brothers Invoice Finance?

There is no single threshold covering every Close Brothers route. The standard factoring and invoice discounting pages both state a minimum turnover of £750,000 a year, checked on 25 August 2026. Below that, the Scale Up team handles start-ups and smaller SMEs with facilities up to £350,000 and publishes no turnover minimum, and Growth Guarantee Scheme invoice finance facilities can start at £1,000. The £500,000 figure that circulates widely, including on an earlier version of this page, is not published by Close Brothers anywhere. Final eligibility is decided at underwriting.

How much does Close Brothers Invoice Finance cost?

Close Brothers does not publish a rate. It publishes the charging structure: a service fee calculated as a percentage of your gross turnover, and a discount fee charged against your daily outstanding balance. Its fees page states that all agreements are individually priced and that all fees are disclosed when the facility is arranged. Any percentage you see attributed to Close Brothers is a market estimate rather than the lender’s published pricing, and your own rate comes from a quote.

How much of an invoice will Close Brothers advance?

Up to 90% of invoice value, stated consistently on its factoring, invoice discounting and invoice finance pages. That percentage applies to approved eligible debt rather than to your gross sales ledger, so credit limits, concentration caps, ageing rules, disputes and credit notes all reduce it before it reaches your account. Liquidity Plus can top an invoice discounting facility up to 100% prepayment, for limited companies and subject to qualifying criteria.

Does Close Brothers fund start-ups?

Yes, through two routes. Close Brothers launched its Scale Up team in August 2025 specifically for start-ups and smaller SMEs, offering facilities up to £350,000 with prepayments up to 100%. Separately, it is an accredited Growth Guarantee Scheme lender, and invoice finance facilities under that scheme can start at £1,000. Neither route is the standard £750,000 product, so ask for them by name rather than accepting a turnover-based refusal.

Is Close Brothers Invoice Finance FCA regulated?

The facility itself generally is not. Commercial invoice finance provided to a business sits outside the FCA’s conduct rules, because the borrower is a company rather than a consumer. The parent, Close Brothers Limited, is authorised by the PRA and regulated by the FCA and PRA under firm reference number 124750, but that authorisation covers Close Brothers Limited’s regulated activities and does not convert your facility into a regulated product. In practice that means no Financial Ombudsman Service route for this facility, and no FSCS protection, which covers deposits rather than borrowing.

Who legally provides Close Brothers Invoice Finance?

Close Invoice Finance Limited, company number 00935949, registered at 10 Crown Place, London EC2A 4FT. Close Brothers Invoice Finance is a trading style of that company, which its own terms and conditions confirm. Close Brothers Limited, company number 00195626, is the parent. Check which entity is named on your facility agreement, because the trading style is not a legal person.

How do I complain about Close Brothers Invoice Finance?

Complain to Close Brothers first, within 12 months of the issue, and wait for its final response or a deadlock letter. If the contracting entity is a UK Finance IF/ABL member, you can then register the complaint with UK Finance within six months of that response, and CEDR adjudicates independently, issuing a final decision within 90 days. The maximum award is £50,000 for matters arising on or after 1 January 2021, and £28,000 for earlier ones. The decision is binding with no appeal. Confirm member status in writing before you sign, because this route depends on it.

Does Close Brothers offer single-invoice finance?

Not on its published products. Both the factoring and invoice discounting pages list a willingness to finance all your invoices, rather than selected ones, as an eligibility criterion, and Close Brothers does not advertise a selective or spot facility. If you want to fund one invoice and stop, you need a provider built for it: our guides to selective invoice finance and spot factoring cover the options.

How long does Close Brothers Invoice Finance take to set up?

Close Brothers states that once you are approved and onboarded, “money is often available within a couple of weeks”. That is guidance rather than a commitment, and the clock starts at approval rather than at enquiry, with a discovery call and a ledger survey before it. The five-working-day setup quoted on some comparison sites does not appear on any Close Brothers page we could find. Treat this as a facility to arrange ahead of need.

Does the Growth Guarantee Scheme reduce what I owe?

No. The scheme gives the lender a government-backed guarantee covering 70% of the outstanding balance. The British Business Bank states plainly that the borrower always remains 100% liable for the debt, and that the guarantee is provided to the lender rather than to the business. A scheme-backed facility may be available where an ordinary one is not, but your liability is unchanged.

How We Reviewed Close Brothers Invoice Finance

Here is how we checked this page, so you can weigh what follows. We read every product fact from a primary source on 25 August 2026, and each one carries its evidence position in the text: publicly confirmed, provider guidance, BusinessExpert calculation, or not publicly confirmed. The sources checked were Close Brothers’ own invoice finance, invoice factoring, invoice discounting, fees, bad debt protection, Liquidity Plus, asset-based lending, Growth Guarantee Scheme, products and terms and conditions pages; and its August 2025 announcement of the Scale Up team.

Beyond the provider, we checked the FCA Register entry for Close Brothers Limited (FRN 124750); Companies House records for Close Invoice Finance Limited (00935949) and Close Brothers Limited (00195626); the British Business Bank and GOV.UK material on the Growth Guarantee Scheme; the UK Finance Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework; CEDR’s IFABL scheme rules; Close Brothers Group’s motor finance redress disclosures; and the Close Brothers Trustpilot profile.

We have not held or used a Close Brothers facility, and nothing here is presented as first-hand testing. We do not accept payment for product placement.

We did not obtain a Close Brothers quotation, so this page contains no Close Brothers rate. The worked cost example is a BusinessExpert calculation on assumed inputs, labelled as such where it appears, and its percentages are illustrative rather than the lender’s. Where Close Brothers publishes nothing we have said so rather than substituting a market average. We think a correction is worth naming rather than quietly overwriting, so here are the seven claims this revision changed.

The FCA firm reference number was given as 195626, which is Close Brothers Limited’s Companies House number; the correct firm reference is 124750. A universal £500,000 minimum turnover, described as “the gate”, is replaced by the published £750,000 criterion on the standard products, the Scale Up route to £350,000 facilities, and Growth Guarantee Scheme facilities from £1,000. Service charges of 0.75–2.5% and discount margins of 1–3% over base were presented alongside Close Brothers’ name; they are UK market ranges, Close Brothers publishes neither, and they have been removed rather than relabelled.

A 12-month rolling contract with 30 to 90 days’ notice was stated as a Close Brothers term. We found no provider evidence for it and have removed it; the only minimum term and notice period Close Brothers publishes anywhere are the 18-month contract and six-month notice required to qualify for a three-months-free promotion on bad debt protection, which is a different product on promotional terms.

The Trustpilot score was given as 3.5 and now reads 3.6 from 7,289 reviews with its star distribution and, more importantly, its scope. Bad debt protection was loosely described and now carries the published “up to 100% on pre-approved customers” wording with its conditions. And the claim that Close Brothers is a member of UK Finance’s IF/ABL section is now stated as unconfirmed, because the provider’s own terms page still names the Asset Based Finance Association, which ceased to exist as a separate body on 1 July 2017.

Related guides

• Invoice finance explained
• Invoice factoring vs invoice discounting
• Advance rates explained
• Invoice finance fees comparison
• Bibby Financial Services review
• Aldermore invoice finance review
• Growth Guarantee Scheme guide