How long does a business loan take? The HomeSec clock explained

The clock, step by step

1. The application arrives, say at ten in the morning. Nothing has to be attached to it.
2. Assessment, then a conditional approval (a letter of offer) if the file holds up. It is signed and emailed back.
3. Due diligence, about four hours: searches on the title, the company and the people behind it, and what is owed against the property.
4. Lawyers instructed, with loan contracts out to your own solicitor within about two hours.
5. You sign with your solicitor, who emails the documents back.
6. Overnight, the signed documents sit with the lawyers to be checked first thing.
7. Next morning: documents checked, security lodged, settlement instructed.
8. Telegraphic transfer, in the account within about two working hours.

Ten in the morning to ten the next morning. That is what “as little as 24 hours” describes: a sequence rather than a promise, where every step assumes the one before it finished.

Where it stretches

At the solicitor's appointment, which belongs to somebody else's diary, and at the first mortgagee's consent where the loan is a registered second mortgage. What the clock leaves out is just as telling: no sworn valuation and no financial analysis, the two blocks that make up most of a bank's weeks.