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Innovate UK Innovation Loans
Secure up to £2 million in non-dilutive funding with an Innovate UK Loan.
Secure a no-equity R&D loan with a flexible, up to 7-year repayment term.
What is an Innovate UK Loan?
The Innovate UK Innovations Loans Future Economy Programme offers innovation loans for UK-registered micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Unlike regular bank loans, they are designed to support late-stage research and development projects with the potential to commercialise and boost the UK economy.
What sets this loan apart from the rest is its below-market interest rates with long repayment terms. Innovate UK loans provide game-changing funding to help SMEs develop new products, services, or process improvements without the initial financial pressure of traditional bank loans.
Innovate UK Loan vs Bank Loans What’s the Difference?
By nature, Innovate UK loans are designed for scaling businesses, providing you with up-front payments, offering lower interest rates and flexible repayment terms, and rewarding R&D innovation.
How Much Could I Get?
Innovate UK Loans can range from £100,000 to £2 million, and are offered with a flexible repayment term. The exact amounts you can secure will be specified in the competition you apply to.
The Innovate UK Innovations Loans Future Economy Programme has committed
£252 million+ to UK businesses since 2017.
What is the Interest Rate for the Innovate UK Loan?
Recipients of Innovate UK’s Innovation Loan benefit from a low, fixed interest rate of 7.4% with long repayment terms of up to 7 years, with no setup fees or personal guarantees required — making it one of the most accessible funding options available to SMEs.
While your R&D is ongoing, you only pay half the interest (3.7%) on the amount drawn down, with zero principal repayments during this period. This means incredibly low payments for the first 3 years, allowing you to focus on product development without financial strain.
Once your R&D is complete and you start selling your product, full repayments begin. At this stage, you’ll be required to pay the full 7.4% interest, along with the deferred half-interest from the first 3 years, plus the principal of the loan.
Do I Qualify for an Innovation Loan?
Innovate UK loans support UK-registered SMEs pioneering innovation projects that will bring a real-world impact and contribute to future economic growth. Your project must focus on one or more of the specific themes outlined in Innovate UK’s Plan for Action, which includes net zero, health and wellbeing, and next-generation digital technologies.
Businesses carrying out late-stage R&D or user testing for new products, services, or processes.
SMEs on a mission to scale up, rather than those that are just starting.
Growth-oriented businesses with a solid strategy for commercial success and economic impact.
Limited funding from personal resources or lack of alternative private-sector funding.
What can I use the Innovation Loan For?
Innovate UK’s innovation loan can be used for late-stage research and development projects, covering up to 100% of eligible project costs. This means that any activity categorised as fundamental research or feasibility studies is not eligible. You must have a prototype that has undergone some form of testing.
You may only spend your loan on the project. See more details in Innovate UK’s Innovation Loan Guidance for Applicants.
Grantify's customers submit their application 7x quicker than applying solo.
How Do I Apply for an Innovation Loan?
You could apply directly with Innovate UK – or you could save valuable time and energy, and apply with Grantify’s AI-driven platform.
The Grantify platform builds your application from start to finish without:
- Wasting your time reading long, open-ended instructional PDFs
- Endless, vague suggestions for change
- Writing it all yourself
- Sourcing your own market statistics
When it comes to the Innovation Loan Programme, the application requires financial forecasts for the duration of the loan period, including quarterly projections. Input from your Accountant or CFO is a must at this stage.
At Grantify, we cannot provide financial advice but our Chartered Accountants will review your financial modelling to identify errors and provide feedback based on the Innovate UK loan assessment criteria.
If you don’t get funded the first time around, we’ll help with your second application for free.
Why Grantify?
Break down the complex process into short, simple questions.
Guide you throughout the entire process.
Use model answers from past winners as examples.
Write sections of the application for you.
Give you free access to your own Statista account to reliably source crucial data.
Save your valuable time by building an application from your answers.
“By far the best example of a project submission that I have seen in a while under this or any other competition”
What Our Clients Say About Us
Grantify's platform made it clear exactly what details would catch the eye of the application assessors. In addition, leading up to the internal deadline they were very responsive to our many questions, even through the weekend leading up to the deadline. Finally, after receiving news of our successful application, Grantify was able to provide a lot of extra details around the structure of the program that weren't provided up front by Innovate UK, which was a big help in understanding how much time and effort we needed to allocate outside of the project work.
To be successful on our first try is a testament to the system that [Grantify] has developed and is improving. The simplicity of the forms that you asked us to fill in and the direction that you have given has really helped us to fill in the application with confidence. We could have spent a lot of time coming up with unique phrases for the questions but your model answers were very helpful. This has been invaluable in applying and receiving the funding and not wasting too much of our precious time
Check if You’re Eligible in 90 Seconds
Take our fast, free eligibility quiz today to check if you could qualify for loan funding.
Then, book a call for a no-obligation, no-nonsense advice session with one of our experts to kick off your funding journey.
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