Novuna Business Cash Flow Review (2026): Rates, Advance Rates and Verdict

Novuna Business Cash Flow at a Glance

Our Verdict

Novuna Business Cash Flow is a substantial, long-established invoice financier, and for a UK business invoicing other businesses on 30 to 90 day terms it belongs on the shortlist. It sits inside Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC, it has run receivables finance in this country for more than 40 years under one name or another, and its own customers rate it 4.9 out of 5 on Feefo across 320 reviews. Those are real strengths and they are unusually well evidenced for this sector.

The complication is that Novuna now sells two different things under one brand, and its own website quotes different numbers for each. As the lender, Novuna says it advances up to 90% of an invoice. On its comparison pages, where it offers to shop your requirement around a panel of other lenders, the headline is up to 100% of invoice value and rates from 0.5%.

The panel headline is not Novuna’s own offer. We had previously treated it as the direct advance rate, but rechecking Novuna’s lender and comparison pages showed that the direct and panel propositions use different figures.

Read the direct facility on its published terms and it is a conventional proposition with one genuinely unusual feature: a six-month trial before you commit to a rolling contract. What Novuna does not publish is the price. We checked every relevant page on its site and found no service charge, no discount margin, no arrangement fee and no termination cost, so the only number that will ever apply to you is the one in your Offer Letter.

That is normal for invoice finance, and it still means you cannot compare Novuna on cost until you have a quote in writing. It is also why I would treat the trial as the main event rather than a nicety. On a product nobody will price for you in advance, six months of real invoices is the only comparison tool you are going to get.

Best For

• UK businesses invoicing other businesses, turning over at least £50,000 a year: the published floor for Novuna’s own invoice finance
• Established SMEs above £500,000 turnover who want confidential invoice discounting and to keep their own credit control
• Companies that would rather hand debtor chasing to someone else, which is what Novuna’s in-house credit control is for
• Recruitment agencies, where the payroll finance product includes back-office administration rather than funding alone
• Businesses that want a lender with a parent balance sheet behind it and a named relationship manager rather than a portal and a queue
• Anyone who wants to try a facility before signing a long contract: the six-month trial is a real differentiator

Not Ideal For

• Businesses selling mainly to consumers. Invoice finance funds B2B invoices, and a consumer sales ledger will not qualify
• Anyone who needs to see standard published pricing before they will engage. Novuna publishes no price for its own facility, only general market ranges in its guides
• Businesses turning over under £50,000, who fall below the published minimum for the direct facility
• Companies wanting one-off or single-invoice funding from Novuna itself. Its selective and spot pages are comparison journeys onto a panel, not a direct product we can evidence
• Anyone who needs the certainty of Financial Ombudsman Service access. Commercial invoice finance sits outside that, and no provider can change it

Key Facts: Verified 6 October 2026

What Novuna Publishes and What Only a Quote Will Tell You

Novuna is unusually clear about who can apply and unusually quiet about price. It publishes the turnover requirements, maximum advance, trial and Credit Protection terms, but leaves every charge to the quote. For you, that means eligibility can be judged before a conversation; cost cannot.

We left the right-hand column blank because market averages would imply a precision that Novuna’s unpublished pricing does not support. A service charge range lifted from another lender’s tariff tells you nothing about what Novuna will quote you, and dressing it up as research makes the number look more solid than it is. The right-hand column is the list to take into your first conversation.

Novuna’s Own Invoice Finance vs Its Provider Comparison Service

Novuna is both a lender and a comparison service, and the two propositions live on the same website under the same brand. Its invoice finance page says so directly: it can help you release funds from unpaid invoices “either through our award-winning in-house service or by comparing providers”, and later describes the journey as “choose from our in-house solution or an alternative fit”. So when you land on a Novuna page and read a number, the first question is always which of the two businesses is speaking.

This is not a technicality. The two propositions advertise different maximum advances, and only one of them is Novuna lending you money. Its eligibility page, written in the first person as the lender, says “as your lender, we can release up to 90% of your invoices within 24 hours”. Its invoice finance, factoring, discounting, selective and spot factoring pages all carry the same comparison banner: rates from 0.5%, same-day funding, “get up to 100% of invoice value”, and an offer to “compare quotes from the top UK lenders in minutes”. A business reading the 100% figure and assuming Novuna will advance it has misread which company is making the offer.

The comparison panel can still be useful when Novuna’s own facility does not fit your ledger. The problem is presentation: direct-lending terms and panel headlines appear on the same pages in the same typeface, without a clear signal that the offer has changed. You need to establish who the lender is before treating any headline as part of Novuna’s own facility.

How Much of an Invoice Will Novuna Advance?

Up to 90%, on Novuna’s own facility. That figure comes from Novuna speaking as the lender on its eligibility page, and it is repeated on the invoice finance calculator, which describes releasing “up to 90% of the invoice straight away, and the final 10% when the invoice is settled”. It is the number to plan around.

Novuna’s Direct Facility: Up to 90%

The mechanics are the standard ones: you raise the invoice, Novuna advances up to 90% of it, and the remaining balance reaches you once your customer pays, less the charges for the period. Novuna applies the same published ceiling to factoring and to invoice discounting, which is a small point in its favour: several competitors advertise different maxima for the two products and then quote the higher one on their general pages.

The published advance is a maximum, not an entitlement. Your quoted percentage depends on the quality of the ledger, including customer payment times, debtor concentration, credit notes and sector risk. Novuna does not explain how it sets an individual advance rate, so the headline cannot tell you how much of your own ledger will qualify.

Where the “Up to 100%” Headline Comes From

It comes from the comparison service, not from Novuna’s own facility, and it appears on five of Novuna’s product pages: invoice finance, invoice factoring, invoice discounting, selective invoice finance and spot factoring. On each one it sits in a banner that reads “Rates from 0.5%… Get up to 100% of invoice value… Compare quotes from the top UK lenders in minutes”. That is the panel speaking.

Novuna’s own pages disagree with each other on this. Rather than quietly pick the likelier figure, we have set the conflict out as we found it on 6 October 2026. The spot factoring page carries “up to 100% of invoice value” in its banner and, a few hundred words further down in its own how-it-works steps, “get up to 90% of the invoice value within 24-72 hours”. Both sentences are on the same page. The eligibility page, which is the only place Novuna writes as the lender, says 90%.

The invoice finance calculator row also says Novuna releases “the final 10% when the invoice is settled”.

All four sources checked on 6 October 2026. If you have been quoted 100% by anyone at Novuna, get it confirmed in writing and get the lender’s name on the same document, because on the published evidence that offer is coming from somewhere other than Novuna’s own book.

Headline Advance vs Cash You Can Actually Draw

Even at a full 90%, the percentage is not applied to your sales ledger. It is applied to approved eligible debt, which is what survives after the funder has taken out everything it will not lend against, and then reduced again by whatever you have already drawn. The gap between the two is the most common reason a facility disappoints in month one, and it is worth walking through once with real arithmetic rather than leaving it as a caveat.

Novuna does not publish its exclusion rules, its ageing policy or its concentration limits, so the deductions below are illustrative and use conventional invoice finance criteria. The arithmetic is ours, and the point of it is the shape rather than the individual lines.

The advance is £183,645 against a £250,000 ledger. That is 73% of the book, not 90%, and the business has £88,645 of new cash rather than the £225,000 the headline invites it to picture. Nothing improper has happened (every deduction is ordinary), but the difference between 90% and 73% is the difference between a facility that solves the problem and one that does not. It is a BusinessExpert calculation on assumed figures, and the only version that matters is the one built from your own aged debtor report. Ask for it during the trial.

How Much Does Novuna Invoice Finance Cost?

Nobody outside Novuna can tell you, and any review that gives you a number is guessing. Novuna does not publish a price for its own facility. Its invoice discounting guide quotes typical ranges for the product in general: a service fee of 0.2% to 0.5% of turnover and a discount fee of 1.5% to 3% above base rate, against 0.75% to 2.5% of turnover for factoring. Novuna labels its own worked example “illustrative” and says exact rates depend on your turnover, sector, debtor quality and contract length, so these describe the market rather than a Novuna tariff. No arrangement fee, minimum monthly fee or termination cost is published at all. Your price arrives with your Offer Letter and not before.

Does Novuna Publish Its Rates?

No. We checked the invoice finance, factoring, discounting, selective, spot factoring, eligibility and calculator pages on 6 October 2026, and none of them carries a rate for Novuna’s own facility. The only percentage on the site is the panel’s “rates from 0.5%”, which appears in the comparison banner alongside the 100% advance claim and belongs to the same proposition.

This is normal. Invoice finance is underwritten one ledger at a time, and the sector as a whole publishes very little; Bibby and Close Brothers publish no standard tariff either. It is still a real cost to you, because it means the comparison you need to do cannot be done from anybody’s website. It has to be done from two or three written quotes.

What “Rates From 0.5%” Actually Refers To

It is a comparison-panel headline, not Novuna’s published price. “From” figures describe the lowest advertised rate across a panel of lenders for an applicant who meets every condition. They are not an estimate of what a typical business pays, they are not Novuna’s own rate, and they do not tell you which of the two charges they refer to.

That last point catches people out. Invoice finance has two separate charges, and 0.5% could plausibly describe either. Half a percent of turnover as a service charge is a very different sum from half a percent as a discount margin over a reference rate. On a £600,000 turnover, the first is £3,000 a year. The second, applied to an average drawn balance, would be a few hundred pounds. A single unlabelled percentage is not enough information to compare anything, which is why the quote-stage questions below matter more than the headline.

How Invoice Finance Charging Works

The service charge and discount charge are calculated on different bases. Separating them is the first step in understanding what a quote will cost you.

The service charge is a percentage of the gross turnover you put through the facility. It pays for running the facility and, on a factoring arrangement, for the credit control Novuna does on your behalf. Crucially it is charged whether or not you draw the money, so it behaves like a subscription tied to your sales volume rather than a cost of borrowing.

The discount charge, sometimes called the finance charge, is interest on the funds you have actually drawn, usually quoted as a margin over a reference rate and accrued daily. The Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75% on 17 September 2026 and the next decision is due on 5 November 2026, so a margin quoted “over base” moves when that moves.

Beyond those two sit the ancillary charges, which is where quotes diverge most and where the least attention usually gets paid. Arrangement fees, annual audit or survey fees, CHAPS and same-day payment fees, refactoring fees when an invoice ages past an agreed point, minimum monthly service charges that bite when your turnover dips, and termination costs. Novuna publishes none of them, which is neither unusual nor reassuring.

The Fees to Check in Your Offer Letter

Take this list into the conversation and get every line answered in writing. We have deliberately not attached numbers to it, because we have no evidence of what Novuna charges and an invented range would be worse than no range at all.

• Service charge: the percentage, and whether it applies to gross turnover including VAT
• Minimum monthly service charge: the figure, and the turnover below which it starts costing you money
• Discount charge: the margin, the reference rate it sits over, and whether it accrues on the gross advance or on what actually reaches your account
• Arrangement or set-up fee: the amount, and whether it recurs on renewal
• Audit or survey fees: how often, and who pays for the surveyor
• Refactoring or ageing fees: the day count that triggers them and what they cost
• Payment fees: the charge for same-day CHAPS against standard settlement
• Credit Protection: the price, and which debtors it will and will not cover
• Termination: the notice period after the trial, and the cost of leaving inside it

Worked Example: Calculating the All-In Annual Cost

Since Novuna publishes no rates, the example below uses assumed charges to show the method. These are not Novuna’s rates and are not an estimate of them. Substitute the figures from your own Offer Letter and the arithmetic holds.

Two things fall out of that. The service charge is the larger cost even though the discount margin is the number most people negotiate hardest, because the service charge applies to everything you invoice while the discount charge only applies to what you draw. And the total excludes every ancillary fee, so a quote with a £2,000 arrangement fee and a £1,500 annual audit fee is 43% more expensive than this table suggests while advertising identical rates. A BusinessExpert calculation, on assumed inputs.

How to Compare a Novuna Quote With Another Provider

Put each quote on the same annual turnover and average drawn balance before comparing it. Convert every charge into an annual cost in pounds and include the ancillary fees in the total rather than leaving them underneath. Dividing that total by the amount actually advanced then shows what each pound of funding costs you.

Do not label the result an APR. Invoice finance has no fixed term and no fixed drawdown, so an annualised percentage rate calculated to the consumer credit methodology does not describe it and using the term implies a precision that is not there. Cost per pound advanced, plus the total annual pounds, is the honest pair of numbers.

One more thing worth doing during the six-month trial: track what you actually drew, month by month, against what you assumed. If your assumed draw is higher than the amount you actually use, the model understates how much of the cost comes from the service charge. Six months of real data turns the renewal conversation into a negotiation rather than a guess.

Novuna Business Cash Flow Eligibility

Novuna publishes its eligibility criteria properly, which is rarer in this market than it should be, and it is the part of its website you can most safely rely on. You need to be a UK business invoicing other businesses, with at least £50,000 of annual turnover, and if you want confidential invoice discounting rather than factoring the threshold rises to £500,000.

Who Can Apply

Novuna’s eligibility page describes UK-based SMEs that invoice other businesses rather than consumers, at any stage from starting up to well established, and it says explicitly that it supports exporting businesses. The B2B requirement is the one that rules people out most often, and it is not a preference. Invoice finance advances money against your customer’s obligation to pay you, so the funder is underwriting your customers’ creditworthiness as much as your own. A ledger of consumer sales has nothing for it to lend against.

If you invoice both businesses and consumers, only the B2B portion of the ledger can support the facility. Your available funding will therefore be based on that qualifying share, not on the turnover shown in your accounts.

Does Novuna Have a Minimum Turnover?

Yes, and this is a correction to what this page said until today. Novuna publishes a minimum turnover of £50,000 a year for invoice finance, stated plainly on its eligibility page and reflected in its invoice finance calculator, which starts its turnover input at the same figure. For invoice discounting the published requirement is turnover of £500,000 and above.

The gap between those two is not arbitrary. Under factoring, Novuna runs the credit control and speaks to your customers, so it can manage collection risk directly. Under invoice discounting the arrangement stays confidential and you keep chasing your own debtors, which means Novuna is relying on your systems and your discipline rather than its own. That takes a bigger, more established business before the risk works, and £500,000 is where Novuna has drawn it.

What Novuna Assesses at Underwriting

Novuna publishes the thresholds but not the assessment, so what follows is the standard shape of invoice finance underwriting rather than a description of Novuna’s internal policy. Expect the funder to want your aged debtor report, recent statutory accounts and management figures, details of your main customers and payment terms, evidence that your HMRC position is current, and confirmation that your invoices are free to be assigned. That last one matters if any of your contracts contain a ban on assignment, and if they do it is worth checking whether Business Contract Terms (Assignment of Receivables) Regulations 2018 make that ban unenforceable.

The ledger itself usually decides the outcome. A book spread across many customers who pay in 30 days underwrites easily; one where a single customer is 60% of turnover and pays in 90 will attract a concentration limit that materially reduces what you can draw, whatever your advance rate says.

Start-Ups and Newer Businesses

Novuna considers new businesses, and the version of this page that ruled out “very early-stage start-ups” was wrong. Its eligibility page says it supports businesses at different stages including start-ups, and adds one specific qualification: “if your business is a new start we prefer homeowners, but if not please still get in touch as we will look at each business individually”.

Novuna’s homeowner preference may make the application harder for a new business whose directors do not own property, but it is not a published exclusion. The provider says it considers each business individually. Invoice finance can still suit a new company because the quality of its commercial customers matters alongside its own trading history.

A new business still needs qualifying B2B invoices before this form of funding becomes available. Future sales or promising contracts do not create a ledger to borrow against. A company already invoicing creditworthy commercial customers has a credible route, and Novuna’s stated homeowner preference may make the application easier.

Novuna’s Invoice Finance Products

Four things sit under Novuna’s own name, and two more sit under the comparison banner. Keeping them apart is the difference between knowing what you are buying and taking a website at face value.

Invoice Factoring

Factoring is the disclosed version: Novuna advances against your invoices and takes over collection, so your customers know a funder is involved and pay Novuna directly. Its in-house credit control is the selling point, and its calculator page pitches it as letting you “focus on running your business, instead of chasing clients for payment”. For a business without a dedicated credit controller that is worth real money, and it is often the deciding factor rather than the rate.

The trade-off is visibility. Your customers will know, and how they react depends on your sector: in construction, haulage and recruitment it is unremarkable, while in some professional services it still prompts questions. Factoring is the route available from the £50,000 turnover floor.

Invoice Discounting

Invoice discounting keeps the arrangement confidential. You collect your own debts and your customers deal only with you, which suits a business with a functioning credit control team that wants the funding without the disclosure. Novuna publishes the £500,000 turnover threshold for it and describes it as a facility for SMEs that want to continue managing their own credit control and chasing late payments.

Confidentiality is not free, and it is not only about price. Because you are collecting, the funder depends on the accuracy of your reporting, so expect closer scrutiny of your systems and more frequent reconciliation than a factoring client would face.

Payroll and Recruitment Finance

Novuna’s payroll and recruitment finance goes beyond advancing money. Its eligibility page describes a back-office administration system supplied alongside the funding, which can cover more of the weekly timesheet and payroll burden than a standard invoice finance facility.

Recruitment cash flow is unusually brutal (you pay contractors weekly and get paid by clients monthly, so the gap is structural rather than occasional), and a funder that also handles the timesheet-to-invoice-to-payroll cycle is solving the administrative problem and the funding problem at once. Of everything Novuna offers, this is the product I would put first on an agency’s list.

Credit Protection

Credit Protection can be added to a Novuna facility and covers up to 90% of eligible debt against a customer becoming insolvent or failing to pay for a prolonged period. It is optional cover, not part of the advance.

Two 90% figures now sit on this page and they are completely different things. The advance rate is how much of an invoice you get early. Credit Protection is how much of a debt you keep if the customer never pays at all. A facility can have both, and confusing them leads a business to think it is protected when it has only been funded. Novuna does not publish what Credit Protection costs or which debtors it will accept, so both belong on your quote-stage list.

Selective and Spot Finance: Panel-Sourced, Not a Direct Facility

Novuna has dedicated pages for selective invoice finance and spot factoring, aimed at businesses that want to fund chosen invoices rather than the whole ledger. Both pages are built as comparison journeys: they carry the panel banner, they offer to compare quotes from top UK lenders, and neither presents Novuna as the funder in the way the eligibility page does for factoring and discounting.

The published evidence supports Novuna’s selective and spot propositions as comparison services, not as its own facilities. That may understate what Novuna will do (it is entirely possible it funds single invoices for existing clients), but nothing on its public site establishes it, and we are not going to assume it. If you want single-invoice funding specifically from Novuna, ask who the lender is before you go any further.

Personal Guarantees, Security and Contract Terms

The contract is where Novuna is most and least forthcoming at the same time. The six-month trial is published, unusual and genuinely in your favour. Everything that happens after it is not published at all.

Does Novuna Require a Personal Guarantee?

We found no published Novuna policy saying that a personal guarantee is always required or never required. Invoice finance agreements often give the funder some recourse to directors, commonly through a warranty or indemnity covering invoice validity rather than a general guarantee of customer debt. Novuna’s preference for homeowners among new-start applicants also suggests that security can matter during assessment.

Treat it as a question with real consequences and get the answer in writing before you sign. A guarantee puts your own assets behind the facility, and it is not the kind of term to discover in the paperwork on the day.

The Six-Month Trial and What Follows It

Novuna advertises a six-month trial period followed by a rolling contract. Its invoice finance calculator lists it under “no lengthy contracts”, and its own entry on the UK Finance Standards Framework member list makes the same claim: clients are not tied in for long periods, and a six-month trial is provided so SMEs can test the product and service first. Two sources, one of them published by the industry body, both checked on 7 October 2026.

This is a better arrangement than the twelve-month minimum term this page previously assumed, and it changes how the decision is best approached. A trial converts an unpriceable facility into a testable one. You cannot compare Novuna on published rates because there are none, but you can run it for six months and see what the service charge actually costs you, how the credit control team treats your customers, and how much you really drew.

Novuna does not publish the conditions attached to the trial, and we could not find them on its site. Nor does it publish the notice period on the rolling contract that follows, the minimum term if there is one, or what leaving early costs. Those three are the terms that decide how easily you can walk away, and they are settled entirely in your facility agreement.

Minimum Fees, Notice Periods and Renewal

None of these are published. Ask for the notice period in months, whether it runs from any date or only from an anniversary, and whether a minimum monthly service charge applies during the notice period. That last combination is what makes leaving an invoice finance facility expensive, because you can end up paying a minimum fee on turnover you are no longer putting through.

What to Confirm in the Offer Letter Before You Sign

• The advance percentage, and the definition of eligible debt it applies to
• Debtor concentration limits, and the ageing point at which an invoice stops being funded
• Whether a personal guarantee, warranty or indemnity is required, and from whom
• The conditions attached to the six-month trial, and what changes when it ends
• The notice period, the minimum term and the cost of terminating inside it
• Whether the minimum monthly service charge continues to apply during notice
• Every fee from the quote-stage list above, in pounds

How Quickly Can You Get Funding?

Novuna separates onboarding speed from the time taken to fund an invoice. A quick sign-up does not guarantee that the first drawdown will arrive just as quickly, because underwriting and invoice verification still have to happen.

Application and Underwriting

Novuna says its digital onboarding can sign you up within 24 hours of the initial appointment, using a platform it calls FLi. Its own UK Finance member entry describes FLi as a market-leading digital onboarding platform, which is a useful independent confirmation of what the tool actually does: it is the onboarding system, not the day-to-day client portal.

The 24 hours runs from the initial appointment, which is a provider claim about the fastest case rather than a guarantee, and it does not include the work before that appointment: assembling your aged debtor report, your accounts and your customer list. Realistically, gathering the paperwork takes longer than the sign-up does.

First Drawdown

Novuna advertises same-day funding and funds released within 24 hours, and its eligibility page frames the advance as reaching you within 24 hours of the invoice. Those claims sit alongside verification: on a factoring facility the funder confirms invoices with your customers before it advances against them, and the first drawdown on a new facility is when that process is slowest, because nothing about your ledger has been checked before.

Funding Once the Facility Is Live

Day to day, Novuna describes a debtor portal with visibility of invoices and payments, automated payment allocation and same-day access to funds. For collections, Novuna runs Esker Collections Management, an accounts receivable automation platform; Esker’s own published customer story describes Novuna rolling out access to its clients so they can see what the credit control team is doing on their behalf.

Esker is a collections and credit control tool. This page previously described it as the portal through which invoices are uploaded and funding is drawn, and we could find no evidence for that: neither Novuna’s site nor Esker’s material describes it as a drawdown system. If the distinction sounds academic, it is not: a business choosing Novuna for its funding technology and a business choosing it for its credit control automation are buying different things.

Novuna Business Cash Flow Customer Reviews

Novuna Business Cash Flow has a dedicated Feefo profile for this product, and it is excellent: a 4.9 out of 5 service rating across 320 reviews. That is the evidence to use, and it is a considerably better source than the one this page relied on before.

Feefo Rating: Checked 6 October 2026

Feefo matters here for a structural reason rather than because the number is high. It collects reviews from verified customers matched to transactions, and this profile covers Business Cash Flow specifically rather than the wider Novuna brand. On a product where most publicly available sentiment is either brand-level or absent, a product-specific verified sample of 320 is a genuinely useful signal.

It is not a flawless one. Invitation-based review collection tends to produce higher scores than open platforms, because the provider chooses when to ask, and 37 ratings in a year against a client base Novuna describes as more than 1,000 SMEs means most customers are not represented. The reviews provide useful evidence of customer satisfaction, but they cannot show how every customer is treated or rule out problems.

What Customers Praise

The recurring themes across recent reviews are consistent and they cluster on people rather than technology: responsive relationship managers, staff who answer, straightforward onboarding and switching, and credit control support that clients feel is handled properly. Reliability comes up repeatedly.

That is a meaningful pattern for this product. Invoice finance is a relationship business: someone has to make a judgement about a disputed invoice or an unexpected concentration breach, and whether that person picks up the phone determines how the facility feels to run. The praise Novuna attracts is aimed squarely at the thing that is hardest to systematise.

What Complaints Recur

Very little negative feedback is visible in this profile: one four-star rating in the past year and no recurring complaint theme we could identify. We are recording that as an absence of evidence rather than as evidence of absence, because an invitation-based sample of 33 is too small and too favourably selected to detect a pattern reliably.

The Feefo score cannot tell you how a difficult case will be handled. Ask what happens if concentration or overdue-invoice limits reduce your available funding, you need to leave the agreement, or a customer disputes an invoice. Those terms matter more than a headline rating.

Separately, and unrelated to service quality, the FCA and Novuna have issued warnings about clone firms impersonating Novuna entities. If an unsolicited approach claims to be Novuna, check the firm details on the FCA Register before you respond to it.

Why the Wider Novuna Trustpilot Profile Is Not the Right Evidence

Until today this page led its review section with a Trustpilot score of 2.3 out of 5 from 18 reviews, drawn from the novuna.co.uk brand profile. That was the wrong source and we have removed it.

The reasoning is straightforward. That profile covers the whole Novuna group, which is overwhelmingly a consumer business (personal loans, retail finance, vehicle solutions), and the sample was 18 reviews. It described neither this product nor, at that volume, anything reliable at all. Setting a brand-level consumer score against a product-level commercial one and averaging them produces a number that describes nothing real, so we have not done it. Feefo leads because it is the product-specific source; the wider brand profile is context at most.

Is Novuna Safe, Regulated and Who Do You Complain To?

Novuna Business Cash Flow is a trading style of Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC, which is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 704348. That is a real and reassuring fact about the company. It is not the same as your invoice finance facility being FCA-regulated, and the difference decides where you can take a complaint.

What Novuna’s FCA Registration Actually Covers

Firm authorisation and product regulation are two different things. Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC holds consumer credit permissions, which is what a group with a large personal lending and retail finance business needs. Commercial invoice finance provided to a limited company is not a regulated activity, so your facility agreement sits outside the FCA’s product rules whoever provides it.

The consequence is the part that matters and the part most reviews leave out. Because the activity is unregulated, the Financial Ombudsman Service cannot normally consider a complaint about a commercial invoice finance facility, and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme does not apply to it. Neither of those is a criticism of Novuna. It is the regulatory position of the product across the whole market, and any review that presents “FCA regulated” as consumer-style protection here is misleading you.

So the previous version of this page saying “Yes, Novuna Business Cash Flow is FCA regulated” was accurate about the firm and wrong about what it bought you. What it bought you is a well-capitalised counterparty and a firm subject to FCA conduct obligations in its regulated business. What it does not buy you is Ombudsman access on this facility.

UK Finance Membership and the IF/ABL Standards Framework

This is where the protection that does exist comes from, and Novuna qualifies. We found Novuna Business Cash Flow listed as a member of the UK Finance Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework, with its own entry on the framework’s member page, when we checked it on 7 October 2026.

Membership commits a provider to the IF/ABL Code, which sets out what clients, prospective clients and guarantors can expect, and it brings the facility inside an independent complaints process overseen by the Professional Standards Council. It is a voluntary framework rather than statutory regulation, and it is worth having: the alternative, for a client of a non-member, is the courts. Not every invoice financier is a member (Kriya, for one, is not), so this is a genuine point of difference rather than a box every provider ticks.

How to Complain, and the CEDR Route

The route runs through UK Finance rather than directly to the adjudicator, which catches people out. Complain to Novuna first and get its final response or deadlock letter. If that does not resolve matters, contact UK Finance, which logs the complaint, gathers information from both sides and refers it to CEDR Services Limited for independent adjudication.

All figures from CEDR’s IFABL scheme page, checked 7 October 2026. The £50,000 cap is the number to note. CEDR cannot consider a case where the amount sought is clearly in excess of that, so a larger dispute leaves the courts as the remaining route. Two deadlines matter as much as the cap: the complaint has to be raised with the member within 12 months of the issue, and registered with UK Finance within six months of their final response. Clear exit terms are worth agreeing before you sign.

Novuna vs the Alternatives

Your first choice is between an established relationship-managed financier such as Novuna and a digital-first lender that publishes more of its pricing. That difference affects what you can compare before applying, how the facility is serviced and what support is available when an invoice becomes disputed.

Novuna vs Bibby Financial Services

These two are the closest match in the market, and on published evidence there is very little to separate them. Both are large, long-established independent invoice financiers with relationship-managed servicing, both run factoring and invoice discounting, both carry sector specialisms including construction and recruitment, and neither publishes a standard tariff. If you are choosing between them you will be choosing on the quote and the people, not on published terms.

Novuna’s advantages on the published evidence are the six-month trial and the clarity of its eligibility criteria. Bibby‘s is breadth: a wider spread of sector-specific products and a larger international footprint, which counts if you export or operate across borders. Run both quotes and compare them on the normalised basis described earlier. See our Bibby Financial Services review for the detail.

Novuna vs Close Brothers

Close Brothers Invoice Finance is backed by a UK merchant bank, while Novuna is the UK subsidiary of a Japanese financial group. Neither publishes standard pricing, so institutional ownership does not settle the choice. The written quote, service model and fit with your sector will matter more.

Where the two genuinely differ is servicing culture and sector fit, and that is best judged in the meeting rather than from published material. Our Close Brothers invoice finance review covers its proposition in full.

Novuna vs Kriya and Digital-First Invoice Finance

This is the comparison that exposes what Novuna does not do. Kriya publishes its pricing: a discount charge from 2.50 points above Bank Rate, a service fee from 0.25% of funded invoices and a £950 minimum monthly service fee are all on its own broker material. You can model a Kriya facility before you speak to anybody. You cannot model a Novuna one at all.

Against that, Kriya is not a UK Finance IF/ABL member, so its clients have no CEDR route, and its own published requirements sit higher than Novuna’s £50,000 floor. The trade is a familiar one: transparency and speed against scale, relationship management and an independent complaints process. A business that wants to know the price before the meeting should look at the digital-first group; a business that wants a named person and a framework behind the facility should look at Novuna. Our Kriya invoice finance review sets out its terms.

Which Type of Provider Is Likely to Suit You

Whichever way you lean, get more than one quote. None of these providers publishes a tariff, so a single offer gives you nothing to judge it against, and the only leverage you have is a comparable number from somebody else. If you would rather not approach each of them separately, a broker will put your requirement to several funders at once.

Compare invoice finance quotes with Tide Funding Options

Tide Funding Options is a broker rather than a lender, and BusinessExpert earns a commission if you take a facility through it. That does not change the arithmetic above, and it is not a reason to skip going direct to Novuna as well.

Verdict: Should Your Business Use Novuna Business Cash Flow?

For an established UK business invoicing other businesses, yes, Novuna deserves to be one of the two or three quotes you get. Novuna has Mitsubishi HC Capital’s backing, product-specific customer feedback on Feefo and published eligibility criteria. Its six-month trial also gives businesses a chance to assess the service before a longer commitment. Check the trial’s fees and exit conditions alongside the funding offer.

Recruitment agencies should treat it as a first call rather than a shortlist entry. A funder that runs the back office alongside the funding is solving a specific structural problem, and Novuna has been doing it for a long time.

The reservations are about information rather than the product. Novuna publishes no price for its own facility, which is normal for the sector but still means the cost comparison you need cannot begin until you have written quotes. Nothing about the notice period, the minimum term or the exit cost after the trial is public, and those are the terms that determine how easily you can leave. The commercial facility carries no Financial Ombudsman Service access and no FSCS cover (again a market-wide position, not a Novuna one), with the CEDR route capped at £50,000 as the backstop.

Above all, do not treat the panel headline as Novuna’s direct offer; our source check found that it belongs to the comparison service. Novuna’s own lending page says up to 90%, and the 90% applies to approved eligible debt rather than to your sales ledger, which in the worked example above turned a £250,000 book into £183,645 of advance. Go in expecting that arithmetic, use the trial to find out what the facility actually costs you, and get the exit terms in writing before the six months are up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of an invoice does Novuna advance?

Up to 90%. Novuna’s eligibility page says that as your lender it can release up to 90% of your invoices within 24 hours, with the balance released once your customer pays, less charges. The percentage applies to approved eligible debt rather than to your whole sales ledger, so the cash you can draw is normally well below 90% of the book.

Why do Novuna’s pages also say up to 100%?

Because Novuna runs a provider comparison service as well as its own facility, and the 100% figure belongs to the comparison side. It appears in a banner on five product pages alongside “rates from 0.5%” and an offer to compare quotes from top UK lenders. It is not established as the maximum available from Novuna’s own facility.

Do Novuna’s rates really start from 0.5%?

The 0.5% figure is a comparison-panel headline, not Novuna’s own published rate. Novuna publishes no rates at all for its direct facility (no service charge, no discount margin and no fees), so your price arrives with your Offer Letter. Treat 0.5% as the best case advertised across a panel of lenders, and note that it does not say which of the two invoice finance charges it refers to.

What is Novuna’s minimum turnover?

£50,000 a year for invoice finance, published on Novuna’s eligibility page and reflected in its invoice finance calculator. For invoice discounting the published requirement is turnover of £500,000 and above. Both checked on 6 October 2026.

Can a start-up use Novuna invoice finance?

Yes, new businesses are considered. Novuna’s eligibility page says it supports businesses at different stages and adds that for a new start it prefers homeowners, while still looking at each business individually. You do need to be raising qualifying B2B invoices already, because there is nothing to fund otherwise.

Does Novuna require a personal guarantee?

Novuna does not publish a policy on personal guarantees, so it cannot be answered from public sources either way. Invoice finance facilities commonly carry some recourse to directors, often a warranty or indemnity on invoice validity rather than a full guarantee. Get the answer in writing before you sign.

What happens after Novuna’s six-month trial?

A rolling contract follows the six-month trial, according to Novuna’s invoice finance calculator and its own entry on the UK Finance Standards Framework member list. Novuna does not publish the notice period, any minimum term, or what terminating early costs, so those are settled in your individual facility agreement.

Is Novuna Business Cash Flow FCA regulated?

The firm is: Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC is FCA-authorised under firm reference number 704348, holding consumer credit permissions. The product is not. Commercial invoice finance to a limited company is not an FCA-regulated activity, so the Financial Ombudsman Service cannot normally consider a complaint about the facility and the FSCS does not cover it. That applies across the market, not just to Novuna.

Who can I complain to about a Novuna invoice finance facility?

Novuna first, for a final response. After that, because Novuna is a member of the UK Finance Invoice Finance and Asset-Based Lending Standards Framework, you can contact UK Finance on 020 3934 1456, which will log the complaint and refer it to CEDR for independent adjudication. CEDR can award up to £50,000, you must raise the issue with Novuna within 12 months and escalate within 6 months of its final response, and the adjudicator’s decision is final.

What does Novuna Credit Protection cover?

Up to 90% of eligible debt against customer insolvency or prolonged non-payment. It is optional cover added to a facility and it is not the same thing as the 90% invoice advance: one is how much you get early, the other is how much you keep if the customer never pays. Novuna does not publish what it costs.

Does Novuna offer selective or single-invoice finance directly?

Not on the published evidence. Novuna’s selective invoice finance and spot factoring pages are both built as comparison journeys onto a lender panel rather than as its own facility. If you want single-invoice funding specifically from Novuna, ask who the lender is before going further.

What is the difference between FLi and Esker?

FLi is Novuna’s digital onboarding platform, which is how it can offer sign-up within 24 hours of an initial appointment. UK Finance’s member entry describes it that way. Esker is a separate accounts receivable automation platform Novuna uses for collections and credit control, giving clients visibility of what the credit control team is doing. Esker is not evidenced as an invoice upload or funding drawdown system.

What is Novuna’s Feefo rating?

4.9 out of 5 from 320 reviews, with 37 ratings in the past year: 35 at five stars and two at four. Checked on 6 October 2026. Feefo collects from verified customers matched to transactions and this profile covers Business Cash Flow specifically, which makes it a better guide than the wider Novuna brand profile on Trustpilot.

Related guides

• Invoice finance explained
• Invoice factoring
• Invoice discounting
• Bibby Financial Services review
• Close Brothers invoice finance review
• Kriya invoice finance review