Business overdrafts

If you have a Business Current Account, Advantage Business account or Business Plus account, you can apply for a business overdraft.

This feature gives you access to additional funds to help you run and develop your business. You can use your overdraft at any time for 12 months after it has been agreed.

Already got an overdraft?

If you already have an overdraft with your current bank, we’ll do our best to match their terms when you switch to NatWest.

Overdraft price promise

Our overdraft price promise helps small businesses by keeping overdraft prices at a manageable level.

Benefits of a NatWest business overdraft:

• Flexible - use the money at any time during your agreed overdraft term
• Cost effective - you only pay interest on the amount you have borrowed
• Accessible - you can access your funds straight away – as soon as your overdraft has been approved
• Personal service - your NatWest Business Manager will agree your borrowing limit
• Daily interest - interest rates are linked to our base rate. Interest is calculated daily and charged to your account every quarter

Just starting out in business?

For start up businesses (except Foundation Account customers) we can offer a fee-free £500 overdraft with interest charged at a fixed rate for your first year of business (subject to status).

Arrangement Fee

Our arrangement fee covers the cost of setting up your overdraft and our ongoing costs.

These are our standard overdraft fees. They may vary, depending on your specific needs.

Start up businesses

There is no fee in the first year for start up business overdrafts up to £500.

At NatWest we’re committed to helping small businesses to keep trading with confidence.

Our price promise means that we’ll:

• Make no changes to the price of small business overdrafts until the end of 2012 at the earliest
• We guarantee to keep all small business overdrafts in place for the duration of the agreement

We're committed to keeping our promise, so long as there’s no change to the risks associated with lending to small businesses.

This pledge applies to business customers with less than £1 million turnover. It’s also subject to the terms and conditions of the overdraft being met.

Can your bank give you the same promise?

If your bank can’t give you the sort of commitment your business needs, think about switching to NatWest. You can apply online or at your local branch. Our dedicated switching team will help you every step of the way.

The Lending Checklist

Most lenders will ask you for a range of financial and other information before granting your business loan. Our Lending Checklist (PDF, 188KB) is a guide which sets out you the kind of information we'll be looking for and why. Every customer's circumstances are different, however, and as such we may not ask for all of the information in every case.

A guide to the Lending Code for micro-enterprises

It's important that businesses know how they should expect to be treated by us.

With this in mind, NatWest has contributed to creating the Lending Code for micro-enterprises (PDF, 249KB). The Code sets out how we will act fairly and reasonably in all our dealings with you: providing relevant information to you at the right time, assessing whether you can afford to borrow, advising you on what sort of information we'll need from you both before and after a credit product acceptance, providing help if you're experiencing financial difficulties and outlining how to make a complaint.

Sources of Non-bank Finance

Sometimes bank finance products may be inappropriate or unavailable to our customers. In these instances other non-bank finance sources may be more suitable.

As such, we have created a Sources of Non-Bank Finance factsheet (PDF, 137KB) which explains the benefits of a wide range of financial products now available to help businesses access the investment needed for them to grow and thrive.