The FCA has published a review setting out practical steps to support business access to finance in the UK. The findings are worth reading carefully.
The review confirmed that FCA regulation is not the primary barrier businesses face when accessing finance. The friction is elsewhere – in fragmented application processes, duplicated checks, limited awareness of available options, and products that do not suit businesses without traditional collateral.
The FCA’s response focuses on three areas: supporting a more proportionate regulatory regime through Consumer Credit Act reform, helping unlock the benefits of open finance with business lending as a prioritised use case, and monitoring industry work on digital verification to reduce duplication in customer checks.
The open finance prioritisation is the most significant signal here. The FCA has explicitly named business lending as one of two key use cases it will focus on as it develops proposals for the first open finance scheme. That puts real-time financial data – banking data that reflects how a business actually operates day to day – at the centre of how credit decisions can be improved.
For platforms building on Open Banking infrastructure today, that trajectory is affirming. The regulatory direction is aligned with where the market is already moving.
Read the full FCA press release: FCA Sets Out Steps to Support Small Businesses’ Access to Finance
About the Author
The Finexer Team is a collective of fintech engineers, payments specialists, and Open Banking experts working on financial infrastructure for UK businesses. Finexer builds API-driven solutions that allow companies to access real-time bank data, initiate Pay by Bank payments, and integrate financial services directly into their products.