Funding for agencies placing locums, nurses, carers and allied health professionals, where the problem is paying your workers weeks before the trust pays you.
This is finance for the agency, not for individual clinicians. Everything here is business finance for staffing companies and recruitment businesses. We do not arrange personal loans or consumer credit for individual locums, contractors or sole practitioners.
What we arrange for healthcare agencies
- Invoice finance sized around your contractor payroll cycle
- Full back-office solutions covering timesheets, invoicing, credit control and contractor payments
- Funding against NHS framework billing and approved timesheets
- Bad debt protection against client insolvency
- Working capital and growth funding for agencies scaling into new frameworks
- Funding for permanent placement fees alongside contract billing
The structural problem
A healthcare staffing agency pays its locums, nurses and carers weekly or fortnightly, then waits 30 to 60 days or longer to be paid by an NHS trust, health board or care operator. Every new placement widens that gap before it closes it, so growth consumes cash rather than generating it.
Invoice finance solves it directly by advancing against each invoice as it is raised. The facility scales with your placements rather than needing renegotiation every time you win a framework.
What lenders will actually do
- Facility sizes: from £50,000 up to £50m for staffing businesses, with advances of up to 100% of invoice value.
- No concentration limits: specialist recruitment funders will fund an agency whose ledger is dominated by one or two NHS trusts. This is the single most important difference from a general invoice financier and the reason healthcare agencies get declined elsewhere.
- Bad debt protection: up to 95% included as standard by some funders rather than priced as an extra.
- Back office: full outsourced solutions covering timesheets, invoicing, credit control and contractor payments are available alongside the funding.
- Security: personal guarantees are not always required.
Why healthcare agencies get declined elsewhere
The usual reason is debtor concentration. If a large share of your ledger sits with one NHS trust or one care group, most invoice financiers will decline or heavily restrict the facility, because their credit policy caps a single debtor at a proportion of the book.
Specialist recruitment funders take a different view and will fund a concentrated ledger where the debtor is strong. Knowing which funders apply concentration limits and which do not is most of the value in placing this deal, and it is the reason a generalist broker will often come back with a no.
Framework and application billing
Agencies supplying through NHS frameworks frequently invoice against approved timesheets and framework terms rather than clean delivery documentation. Some funders will not lend against that at all. Others are entirely comfortable with it. We will tell you which before you apply rather than after a decline.
Common questions
Will my clients know I am using invoice finance?
Not with a confidential facility. Disclosed factoring and full back-office solutions are also available where you would rather the funder handled credit control and contractor payments, which many smaller agencies prefer.
Can I get funded if one trust is most of my turnover?
Yes, with the right funder. Some specialist recruitment financiers apply no concentration limits at all. This is exactly the case that fails at a generalist funder and succeeds at a specialist one.
Do I need to give a personal guarantee?
Not always. Some specialist recruitment funders do not require one, which is unusual in this market and worth knowing before you sign elsewhere.
I am a locum, not an agency. Can you help?
Not with personal borrowing. We arrange business finance only, so if you trade through your own limited company we can look at business facilities, but we cannot arrange personal or consumer lending for individuals.
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.
This page was last reviewed in September 2026 and is next scheduled for review in March 2027. Lending criteria change frequently, so contact us for current terms rather than relying on published figures.