The FCA has collected data from lender firms as a follow up to the super-complaint from the Federation of Small Businesses about the use of personal guarantees for business loans to SMEs. The complaint had noted that most SME loans are unregulated and that the incidence of personal guarantee requests is higher for unregulated business. The FCA’s research has confirmed this, saying that the number of guarantees to support regulated lending is low. Also, there were few complaints and the FCA had few compliance concerns based on the questions it asked. It noted, however, that its sample size was very small.
