“New Lending Every Hour”: Putting Scale in Perspective

Understanding the scale of SME lending in the UK can be challenging. Annual lending figures — £60 billion, £70 billion, or more — often feel abstract and disconnected from day-to-day business realities. One way to make these numbers more intuitive is to translate them into an “hourly lending” benchmark, a communication tool that highlights how much capital moves through the SME ecosystem in aggregate.

1. Converting Annual Lending Into an Hourly Benchmark

If the UK SME lending pool is roughly £60–70 billion annually (using recent industry reports as a working range), we can illustrate daily and hourly flows by simple division:

• Annual: £60–70 billion
• Per day (÷ 365): ~£160–190 million
• Per hour (÷ 24): ~£6.7–8 million

This is not a precise operational statistic — it doesn’t reflect which hours are active or inactive, nor the timing of approvals or drawdowns — but it provides a helpful sense of proportion.

In effect, the UK economy channels the equivalent of £7–8 million in SME lending every hour, showing just how substantial the credit ecosystem is when viewed through a more accessible lens.

2. Why This Benchmark Matters

The “lending per hour” metric helps stakeholders:

a) Visualise capital movement

Large annual figures obscure the flow of money into SMEs on a continual basis. The hourly benchmark makes the system feel dynamic and tangible.

b) Benchmark performance

Lenders, policymakers, and industry bodies can reference the hourly figure to frame discussions on:

• Lending capacity
• Market health
• Supply/demand alignment
• Pipeline throughput

c) Support communication and storytelling

For public audiences — SME owners, media, or regional advocates — the per-hour metric provides a simple narrative about the scale and speed of SME financing in the UK.

3. But the Hourly Metric Has Caveats

The benchmark is illustrative, not literal. In practice:

• Many hours see no lending activity at all, especially outside business hours.
• Large transactions can create clusters, where major approvals distort daily averages.
• A portion of annual lending reflects refinancing or renewals, not new investment.
• Different sectors and regions show uneven flow, with some areas absorbing much larger volumes than others.
• Actual timing of deals follows working hours, compliance cycles, and internal credit committees, not a continuous 24-hour stream.

Treating the figure as a communication tool helps avoid misinterpretation while still providing clarity.

4. What the Hourly Lens Reveals About Capital Deployment

Applying this perspective highlights a few important truths:

• SME finance is a high-volume, high-velocity ecosystem, even during periods of caution.
• There is likely significant latent demand behind the approved flows — rejected or incomplete applications that the “hourly” figure hides.
• Capital deployment is uneven across products (e.g., overdrafts, term loans, invoice finance), with some items contributing more to the flow than others.
• Understanding where the hourly flow concentrates helps identify
  • growth sectors
  • underserved regions
  • product types with rising demand
  • potential bottlenecks in approval pipelines

5. What Comes Next: Breaking Down the Flow

In upcoming weeks, we will decompose the “new lending per hour” concept into more granular segments to show where those millions actually go:

• By sector: property, construction, professional services, manufacturing, retail, tech
• By region: comparing London/South East dynamism with the Midlands, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland
• By product type: term loans, invoice finance, asset finance, revolving credit, bridging, and more

This breakdown will provide a clearer picture of which parts of the economy drive the lending flow — and which areas remain underserved.

6. Conclusion: A Useful Lens for Understanding SME Finance

The “new lending every hour” benchmark is not a literal measure, but it is a powerful way to contextualise the sheer scale of SME finance in the UK. It sparks productive discussions about:

• lending capacity
• trends in capital deployment
• the balance between new credit and refinancing
• how SMEs in different sectors and regions access finance

As lending conditions evolve in 2025 and beyond, the hourly lens will help stakeholders track momentum and understand where the next waves of SME growth — or constraint — may emerge.

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