Small businesses & limited companies

General rules

Your small business, limited company or charity will need to meet certain eligibility criteria to claim compensation with FSCS. We assess eligibility on a case-by-case basis and it varies for different types of claim. Legal status will affect eligibility, e.g. if you’re an individual or incorporated entity (such as a corporation or limited partnership). Charitable status is never relevant to eligibility. We've got more information on how we protect charities on our dedicated Charities page.

We can only get involved if the firm your company or charity did business with has failed and can’t pay back your money itself. It must also have been authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) at the time the business was carried out.

A small business, limited company or charity may be the direct client of a failed firm but in some cases, e.g. if the company was acting as a bare trustee, an agent company or a nominee company, we may be able to ‘look through’ the company to treat someone else as the claimant. We would then assess them, rather than the company, for eligibility.

If you want to find out if you’d be eligible for FSCS protection while the firm you’re doing business with is still trading (and hasn’t failed), the firm itself should be able to help. If it can’t, you could seek independent legal or financial advice.

If you’re a small business owner or director of a charity, check if you can claim or contact us if you’d prefer. It’s completely free to claim with us.

Deposit claims

We generally protect companies’ deposits, regardless of the size of the company. We assess eligibility under the PRA’s Depositor Protection Rules, in particular rule 2.2. Most types of regulated financial services company are not eligible though.

If a UK-authorised bank, building society or credit union fails, we'll automatically compensate each eligible company depositor up to £85,000.

I’ve got a small business account and a personal account with the same bank – are both accounts covered up to £85,000?

If your business is a separate legal entity (e.g. a limited company or LLP), the business can claim up to £85,000 for its business account, and you can separately claim up to £85,000 in relation to a personal account you also held with the failed bank. 

If you run your business as a sole trader (e.g. Mr & Mrs Smith t/a Smith Motors), your business and personal accounts would be aggregated together, and you could only be able to claim up to £85,000 in total.

Joint accounts and partnerships

Usually, for joint accounts the limit of £85,000 applies to each joint depositor. However, where the joint account is held by two or more business partners, only one £85,000 limit is available in relation to the business account. Individual partners of that partnership could also be entitled to up to £85,000 protection in relation to personal deposits held in their own name with the failed bank.

Insurance claims

We assess eligibility for insurance claims under the PRA’s Policyholder Protection Rules, in particular rules 7 and 8.

Generally, firms with an annual turnover of more than £1 million aren’t eligible for general insurance claims. The same goes for most types of authorised financial services firms.

For general contracts of insurance that are compulsory, usually all firms are eligible, regardless of size or authorisation status.

All firms are generally eligible for long-term insurance contract claims, regardless of size or authorisation status. Realistically, this may not occur very often in practice though, as companies don’t have pensions or annuities.

Investment claims

For investment claims, we use the FCA’s Compensation Sourcebook, in particular COMP 4, to assess if your firm is eligible to claim compensation with us.

Your firm must qualify as a ‘small company’ under section 382 of the Companies Act 2006 to be eligible. There are three criteria in the test - annual turnover, balance sheet and number of employees - and your firm must meet two of the three criteria to qualify as ‘small’.