How private practices fund equipment and growth
Clinics sit in an odd funding position. The professions read as safe, the earnings are strong, and the banks are genuinely willing, but bank processes are built around the established practice with years of accounts, and they move at bank speed. The associate buying into a first practice, the aesthetics clinic two years into trading, or the practice whose scanner has died mid-diary all need something the process cannot give them: a decision this week.
The routes that fit: specialist healthcare term lending, which is competitive for established practices and worth having if you qualify and can wait. Asset finance on clinical equipment, secured on the kit, with lessors who know a CBCT scanner from a chair. And a merchant cash advance sized on the card takings already flowing through reception, repaid as a share of daily settlement, unsecured and quick. Which one fits is mostly a question of what the money is for and how the practice's income actually arrives.
An advance against treatment income, defined
A merchant cash advance is a purchase of future card receivables: a lump sum now in exchange for an agreed percentage of daily card settlement until a fixed total is delivered. Not a loan, so no interest rate, no APR, no term, no fixed instalment. The cost is a factor rate of typically 1.1 to 1.5; the pace is a holdback of typically 5 to 20 percent of daily card takings, by acquirer split or daily direct debit. Sums run £5,000 to £500,000, sized near a month of card turnover, with indicative eligibility from three months of processing and roughly £2,500 a month of card trade.
Clinic statements read exceptionally well. Treatment values are high, so a modest patient count produces serious settlement. The diary books ahead, so the income a funder is buying is partly visible before it happens. And private treatment is card-paid almost without exception now, so the merchant statements represent most of the private side of the business rather than a slice of it.
NHS contracts and plan income: what an advance cannot see
The boundary matters in this sector more than most. NHS contract income arrives by bank transfer from the commissioning body, never through your card terminal, so a mixed practice's NHS side is invisible to an advance. Patient plan income, Denplan and the practice-branded equivalents, is collected by direct debit through the plan administrator and is equally invisible. What an advance sees and sizes is the card-paid private layer: examinations, treatment balances, hygiene, whitening, aligners, injectables, consultations.
A mixed practice turning £80,000 a month of which £30,000 is card-paid private work will be sized on the £30,000. That is still a substantial fundable stream, but it is a different number from practice turnover, and knowing it before applying keeps the conversation straight.
Where NHS or plan income is the bulk of the practice and the need is large, specialist healthcare lending sees the whole income and usually serves better. We arrange both and will say which side of the line your statements put you on.
Chairs, scanners and the equipment stack
Clinical equipment is where the capital goes: a fitted surgery is a six-figure room, a CBCT scanner or intraoral scanner setup is a serious purchase, and aesthetics devices, lasers, IPL platforms, cryolipolysis units, carry price tags that would fund a small shop outright. Bought new from dealers, all of this is classic asset finance, secured on the equipment at rates an unsecured product will not beat, and healthcare lessors are comfortable with the kit.
The advance carries the layer asset finance will not. Refurbished and ex-demo equipment. Surgery refits that are half building works. Decontamination room upgrades driven by compliance deadlines. CAD/CAM software and subscriptions, where the value is the licence rather than the box. The private sale of a retiring practitioner's equipment. And the failed compressor or chair mid-diary, where every cancelled list is revenue gone and a decision in days beats a rate in weeks.
For a surgery build the sensible stack is usually both: asset finance on the securable clinical kit, an advance on the works, sized together against the card stream.
Aesthetics, cosmetic and skin clinics: the pure-card end
The aesthetics trade is the cleanest fit in this sector. There is no NHS layer and rarely a plan book: consultations, injectables, skin treatments and packages all go through the terminal, so the merchant statements are the business. High average tickets, repeat treatment cycles measured in weeks, and a client base that rebooks on schedule produce settlement patterns funders price well.
The sector's funding needs are also distinctive: devices at five figures, practitioner training and certification, clinic fit-outs that must photograph well, and the stock cost of toxins and fillers bought ahead of a full diary. All of it is fundable against the card stream, and the speed suits a trade where a new device can be booked out within weeks of installation.
Two honest notes. Package prepayments are deliverable work, not free cash flow, and funders know the difference: a spike of prepaid packages reads as obligation as much as income. And a clinic built on one practitioner's hands carries key-person risk that no funding structure removes; insurance, not capital, answers that one.
Buying in, fitting out and the associate's first practice
Practice purchases and buy-ins are the profession's defining transactions, and an advance is not the instrument for them: goodwill purchases run on specialist practice lending, which exists precisely for that job and prices it well. What an advance does inside a purchase is carry the edges, the refurbishment the seller deferred, the rebrand, the equipment refresh in the first year, once the terminal is settling in the new owner's name.
For the new clinic opened from scratch the standard rule applies: no card history, no advance, because there are no receivables to buy yet. Fit-out and equipment run on asset finance, personal capital and specialist lending. A few months after opening, once reception is settling card income, the picture changes, and that point reliably coincides with the moment the opening budget's optimism meets reality; our new business cash advance page covers how short a history some funders accept.
Multi-site groups can aggregate statements across clinics, which lifts sizing and strengthens pricing, exactly as in any multi-site card business.
Physio, optical, veterinary and the wider clinic trades
The mechanics of this page extend across private healthcare with local adjustments. Physiotherapy and osteopathy clinics run high-frequency, mid-ticket card trade with insurer-paid work on terms sitting outside the terminal, so the private-card share decides the sizing. Opticians blend NHS voucher income, invisible here, with card-paid frames, lenses and private examinations that read like premium retail. Veterinary practices are card-paid at collection almost entirely, with insurance claims mostly reimbursed to the client rather than the practice, which keeps the terminal representative of the business; their equipment and buy-in economics mirror dentistry closely. Podiatry, audiology and private GP services follow the same pattern: the card-paid private layer is the fundable stream, and everything settled by third parties on terms is not.
In each trade the first question is identical: pull three months of merchant statements and see what the terminal actually says before anyone forms a number.
Not a loan, and not FCA-regulated: the position
Because the funder is buying future card receivables rather than lending, an advance to a limited company sits outside the Financial Conduct Authority's consumer credit perimeter: an unregulated commercial agreement, with no APR disclosure, no cooling-off period and no automatic ombudsman route. The contract is the protection. Read how card takings are defined, whether patient refunds and chargebacks are dealt with sensibly, whether the holdback can be varied, what happens on a change of acquirer or practice management system, and what a personal guarantee attaches to.
Incorporation varies across the professions: many practices trade as limited companies, but sole practitioners and expense-sharing partnerships are common, and agreements with unincorporated businesses at smaller sums can fall within the Consumer Credit Act, with its own disclosures and protections. Ask the funder in writing which regime your agreement sits under before signing. Clinical professionals also carry regulatory duties of their own; nothing in a funding agreement changes CQC, GDC or GMC obligations, and a funder comfortable in healthcare will not blink at that observation.
How we place funding for private practice
We arrange and place with funders, we do not lend, and the funder pays us rather than you. In this sector placement is about reading the income split correctly: which funders understand that a practice's card stream is the private layer of a larger business, which price high-ticket low-frequency settlement well, which healthcare lessors know clinical kit, and where an advance sits alongside specialist practice lending rather than competing with it.
Send three to six months of merchant statements, a note of how NHS, plan and insurer income arrives if you have them, recent bank statements and a plain account of what the money is for. What comes back is a short list compared on total repayable and holdback together, with a straight recommendation, including toward asset finance or specialist term lending where those serve better. The appointment-book economics here share ground with salon funding; the regulatory and equipment layers are what make clinics their own conversation.