Funding clinical and practice equipment across its working life, rather than from partnership drawings.
What we fund
- Diagnostic equipment: ECG, spirometry, ambulatory monitoring, dopplers
- Point-of-care testing equipment
- Ultrasound and imaging where the practice provides it
- Minor surgery equipment and treatment room fit-out
- Clinical furniture, couches and consulting room equipment
- IT infrastructure, servers and networking
- Telephony and patient access systems
- Vaccine refrigeration and cold chain monitoring
Why partnerships in particular should fund rather than buy
Practice equipment bought out of partnership funds comes directly out of what partners would otherwise draw, in the year of purchase, for an asset that will serve the practice for five or more years.
Spreading the cost matches it to the period of benefit and to the partners who will actually be there to benefit. Where a partner is close to retirement, that argument is more than theoretical: funding avoids one partner bearing the cost of an asset the others will use for a decade.
Hire purchase or lease
Hire purchase spreads the cost and the practice owns the equipment at the end. It suits clinical equipment with a long working life.
Leasing suits IT and technology that dates quickly and gets replaced rather than kept. Telephony and patient access systems in particular have moved fast enough that owning a five-year-old system is rarely an advantage.
To check a supplier’s quote, use the asset finance calculator.
Speed
Asset finance is the fastest funding a practice can access. Decisions on straightforward cases are frequently made within hours and payout can follow the same day once documents are returned.
For clinical and diagnostic equipment, expect around three years’ trading history to be the usual requirement. That is rarely an obstacle for an established practice.
Refinancing what the practice owns
Practices that have invested steadily over years often own equipment outright. Refinancing it releases capital for a premises deposit, a refurbishment or a partnership change, without new borrowing against the surgery.
Common questions
Can a partnership take asset finance, or does it need a limited company?
Asset finance is available to partnerships as well as limited companies, and funders in the healthcare space are used to partnership structures.
One exception applies. Where a partnership has two or three partners and the amount financed is £25,000 or less, the agreement is regulated consumer credit. We arrange unregulated business finance only, so we will tell you at the outset if your case falls into that category.
Does equipment finance affect premises borrowing?
It is taken into account in serviceability, but because it is asset-secured it sits differently from unsecured borrowing. If a premises purchase is planned, sequence the two deliberately.
Can we fund IT and clinical equipment together?
Usually yes, on one facility, though the terms may differ by asset type given the different working lives.
Related: medical equipment and asset finance.
All figures are indicative and subject to lender assessment, your circumstances, valuation and prevailing market conditions. Commercial mortgages and unregulated bridging loans are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Property offered as security may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments.