Reacting to: SMEs secure £2.4m through NI Small Business Loan Fund III (Invest NI, 8 October 2026) →
Fifty-seven Northern Ireland sole traders, micro-businesses and SMEs have now borrowed more than £2.4 million between them through the NI Small Business Loan Fund III, Invest NI confirmed on 8 October 2026. The fund sits inside Invest NI's Access to Finance programme, launched in May 2025 and run day to day not by Invest NI itself but by an independent fund manager, Ulster Community Finance Ltd, on a fully commercial basis.
That word commercial matters more than it sounds. Every pound of this £2.4 million gets repaid, with interest, by the businesses that borrowed it — this isn't a grant dressed up in Invest NI branding, it's ordinary lending with Invest NI's capital behind it, aimed at the sole trader or small limited company a bank might turn down but that a smaller, more flexible lender will actually assess properly. If you've assumed Invest NI only hands out grants, this is worth five minutes even if borrowing isn't something you've considered before.
What the fund actually offers
The fund lends between £10,000 and £125,000, with up to £25,000 available specifically to start-up businesses that wouldn't otherwise qualify for the higher ceiling. Loans are offered at commercial interest rates that Ulster Community Finance sets case by case rather than publishing as a single headline figure, so the first real step for any business considering this is a conversation with the fund manager about what rate your own application would actually carry, not an assumption based on what a different business paid.
What the money has actually funded so far
Invest NI's announcement names two of the businesses behind the £2.4 million. Jacksons Catering Equipment, based in Derry~Londonderry and run by managing director Conor Jackson, took a £50,000 loan to expand its product range and build up stock holdings, directly supporting a new distribution agreement for the NordStar range across Ireland. In Newry, The Leisure Experts took a £20,000 loan to cover the staffing, equipment and programme costs of delivering new swimming pool partnerships — the kind of upfront cost that arrives well before the matching revenue does. Both are ordinary trading businesses using borrowed money to fund growth they'd already identified, not speculative expansion.
Putting the average loan size into a tax context
Invest NI's own wording is "more than £2.4 million" across 57 businesses, not an exact total, and it hasn't published how loan sizes are actually distributed across them, so the average below is illustrative, built off the floor figure Invest NI did publish rather than a figure Invest NI itself has calculated. £2.4 million across 57 businesses works out at roughly £42,105 each if spread evenly, comfortably inside the fund's £10,000-£125,000 range and a useful stand-in for what a typical borrower under this fund looks like.
| NI Small Business Loan Fund III, the headline numbers | Amount |
|---|---|
| Total lent since May 2025 | more than £2,400,000 |
| Businesses funded | 57 |
| Average loan, if spread evenly | £42,105 |
| Loan range | £10,000 – £125,000 (up to £25,000 for start-ups) |
Take an illustrative Co. Antrim trade business borrowing that average £42,105 at an illustrative 9% a year — illustrative because Ulster Community Finance doesn't publish a standard rate, so treat the percentage as a stand-in for what a commercial small business loan might cost, not a quote. Over the first year that's roughly £3,790 in interest. Interest on a loan taken out wholly for business purposes is normally an allowable expense, deducted from profit before tax is worked out, so if that business trades as a limited company paying the 19% small profits rate, the deduction is worth about £720 off the corporation tax bill; at the 25% main rate it's worth closer to £950. The loan capital itself isn't taxable income when it's drawn down, and it isn't a deductible expense when it's repaid either — only the interest sits on your tax return, which is the detail a business new to borrowing most often gets wrong.
| Illustrative Co. Antrim trade business, £42,105 loan at illustrative 9% | Amount |
|---|---|
| First-year interest cost | £3,790 |
| Corporation tax saved, 19% small profits rate | £720 |
| Corporation tax saved, 25% main rate | £950 |
What it means depending on where you sit
If you're a start-up, the £25,000 ceiling for a first loan under this fund sits well above what most new business bank accounts will offer against an untested trading history, and Ulster Community Finance exists specifically to assess applications that a mainstream bank's standard credit scoring would reject, not despite a thin trading history but because of it. If you're an established sole trader or small limited company with at least one full year of accounts behind you, the full £10,000-£125,000 range is in play, and a clean set of management accounts showing how the loan gets repaid is the single thing that most improves an application. Either way, this is lending, not a grant: before you apply, be honest about whether the growth you're funding genuinely generates enough extra profit to cover both the capital repayment and the interest, not just the capital.
What to do this week
Start at nisblf.com, Ulster Community Finance's own site for the fund, to see the loan range and application route rather than applying through Invest NI's main portal — Invest NI funds the scheme, but Ulster Community Finance runs the actual lending decision. And whether you're applying for this fund or any other commercial finance, get your cashflow forecast right first: a lender assessing a £42,000 loan wants to see exactly how the repayments get made from the business's own numbers, and that's precisely the groundwork our advisory services are built to help with, rather than a forecast it's wise to guess your way through. It's also worth reading how a loan like this differs from a grant like Groundwork for Growth, since the two suit genuinely different situations and conflating them is the most common mistake we see.
What's still uncertain, and when we'll know
Invest NI's announcement confirms the two headline figures — £2.4 million and 57 businesses — but not the interest rate Ulster Community Finance is actually charging, how much of the original £8 million fund remains available after this first £2.4 million, or whether demand is running ahead of, in line with, or behind what Invest NI expected when the fund launched in May 2025. None of that detail sits in the public announcement; the real answer for any individual business only becomes clear once you've had a conversation with Ulster Community Finance about your own application. We'll know more about how much of the £8 million is left once Invest NI or Ulster Community Finance next reports fund-level figures, which on this fund's past form has come as periodic news announcements rather than a running public total.