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Establishing a successful recruitment process and clear written employment contracts for new employees can have a major impact on your business.

Every business needs to be aware of its obligations under minimum wage and equal pay laws, as well as recent pensions auto-enrolment changes.

You must comply with legal restrictions on employees' working hours and time off, or risk claims, enforcement action and even prosecution.

The right employment policies are an essential part of effective staff management. Make sure any policy is clear and well communicated to employees.

While sick employees need to be treated fairly, you need to ensure that 'sickness' is not being used as cover for unauthorised absence.

Most pregnant employees are entitled to maternity leave and maternity pay, while new fathers are entitled to paternity leave and paternity pay.

As well as undermining morale, illegal discrimination can lead to workplace grievances. Employee discrimination is covered by the Equality Act 2010.

Home, remote and lone workers are becoming increasingly commonplace. Key issues include communication and how to manage and motivate people remotely.

The right approach to consulting with and providing information to your employees can improve employee motivation and performance.

Disciplinary and grievance issues can be a major burden to employers. Putting in place and following the right procedures is essential.

Following the right dismissal and redundancy procedures helps protect your business and minimise the risk of a legal dispute at tribunal.

Employment tribunal claims are a worrying prospect for any employer. A tribunal case is a no-win situation – even if the claim is unjustified.

iwoca's Flexi-Loan product doubles to meet small business demand

20 July 2022

iwoca, one of Europe's largest small business lenders, is today announcing that it is more than doubling the maximum size of its core lending product, Flexi-Loan, allowing small business owners to access up to £500,000. The lender is evolving its most popular product, previously capped at £200,000, to meet the growing appetite for high value loans in the small business sector.

The decision to increase the loan cap follows iwoca seeing current and new customers applying for higher value loans through COVID-19 government loan schemes: the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS).

In addition, the lender's most recent SME Expert Index , a quarterly survey of UK brokers, showed that demand for loans over £200,000 increased compared with last year, rising by 8 percentage points between Q2 2021 and Q1 2022.

The increased loan size allows iwoca to cater for the needs of more small businesses, offering them the opportunity to access finance which meets their individual needs, with some looking to invest for the future and others looking to manage their cash flow in the current challenging economic environment.

The Q1 2022 SME Expert Index found growing their business' was the most common loan purpose for small business (43%), followed by 'managing day to day cash flow' (31%) and 'bridging occasional cash flow gaps' (10%).

From today, small businesses will be able to borrow between £1,000 and £500,000, over a period of one day to two years with iwoca's flexible business loans. With a rapid application process, small businesses will be able to apply for a loan in just five minutes, with money landing in their bank account within 24 hours, in many cases.

Christoph Rieche, co-founder and CEO of iwoca, said: "All of our customers and partners tell us that they love the fast decisions we offer them; for amounts of £250,000 we make firm offers in less than a day. However, larger small and medium sized businesses also told us that our maximum loan amounts were too low for them to be relevant and therefore I am delighted that from today we'll be upping them to £500,000.

"With loans up to £500,000 we now cover an ever larger portion of the SME market. We serve the smallest micro-business that just got started all the way to established medium sized enterprises - regardless in which industry they operate. I am proud that we've already helped more than 70,000 businesses to access finance over the last 10 years, and we won't stop innovating to serve them better in the future."

iwoca was accredited to the Recovery Loan Scheme, having distributed nearly £400 million to small businesses through the Government's Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). In June 2020 the lender launched iwocaPay – an online buy now pay later invoice checkout to help small businesses get paid. iwoca is reaching 1.8 million businesses across the UK and Germany through its embedded lending technology, which allows businesses to access loans through a range of platforms such as accountancy software apps and digital neo-banks. The company has also recently launched free mental health support for all small businesses in the UK, in partnership with online therapy platform Spill.

Story submitted by Jamie Williams, Hanbury Strategy

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