Unsecured business loans
$5,000 to $250,000 as standard, up to $500,000 for the right profile. No property goes up as collateral. That doesn’t mean nothing does, and we’ll show you what does before you sign.
General information only
An unsecured business loan is lent against your cash flow and trading history, not your property.
But most contracts still carry a personal guarantee, and many carry a caveat clause over your personal property that only comes into play if something goes wrong. Understanding that before you sign is what protects you. If you’re a startup without trading history yet, see our startup business loans guide for how that changes what’s realistic.
Does “no security” actually mean no security?
No. It means nothing is registered against your property upfront. What’s in the contract is another matter.
- 01Lots of unsecured business loan providers build personal guarantees and caveat clauses into the contract itself. It rarely shows up as “security” on the label. It shows up in the covenants.
- 02If you default, or breach a covenant listed in the loan agreement, the lender can place a charge on your personal property to recover their money.
- 03Read the covenants, not just the headline “unsecured” claim. That’s where the real terms of the deal sit.
How much can you borrow, and what does it cost?
Most unsecured facilities sit in the $5,000-$250,000 band, with terms currently available up to five years across the unsecured lenders we deal with. For the right profile (strong running balance, consistent cash flow, minimal or no dishonoured payments), some lenders will extend to $500,000 on bank statements and basic information alone. Our business loan calculator lets you model repayments across different amounts and terms.
For a benchmark, start with what the whole market charges. The Reserve Bank publishes average business lending rates every month. These are the figures for July 2026, and they’re dominated by secured bank lending. That’s exactly why they’re the right thing to measure unsecured pricing against.
| RBA series, July 2026 | Average rate |
|---|---|
| Small business, all loans outstanding | 7.46% p.a. |
| Small business, residentially secured | 6.98% p.a. |
| Small business, new loans funded that month | 7.44% p.a. |
| Medium business, all loans outstanding | 6.21% p.a. |
| Large business, all loans outstanding | 5.74% p.a. |
Two things in that table stand out. The first is the gap between small business at 7.46% and residentially secured small business at 6.98%. That’s roughly half a percentage point, and it’s the visible price of pledging your house. The second is that small business pays 7.46% while large business pays 5.74%. Size is priced, and being small isn’t something you can fix before Friday.
Unsecured non-bank pricing sits above all of these, and it should. Nobody is holding your property. That premium is the trade-off for speed, for not registering a caveat, and for a decision that doesn’t wait on a valuation. Whether it’s worth paying depends on what the money does: a facility at a higher rate that lands in 48 hours and wins you a contract is cheaper than a cheaper facility that arrives after the contract is gone.
That’s the usual picture, not a rule. For strong business profiles, unsecured rates can land close to bank pricing, and occasionally better. Your bank statement conduct decides which end of the range you land on.
Source: RBA Statistical Table F7, Business Lending Rates, July 2026 data, published 7 September 2026. Ecommerce Loans is a finance broker, not a lender. Rates and figures shown are indicative only and subject to individual lender assessment.
Around 20 lenders now offer this style of product. Knowing where your profile fits is the difference between a second approval and a second decline sitting on your credit file.
Sourced data: ScotPac
Are Australian businesses turning to non-bank lenders for this?
In real numbers, yes. ScotPac’s SME Growth Index, based on research from East & Partners across 728 SMEs with $1 million to $20 million in revenue, found 92% had either used a non-bank lender or would consider it.
Unsecured lending is a large part of why that shift has happened. A non-bank lender pricing an unsecured facility off cash flow and trading history can turn an application around in days, where a bank asking for property security is often working to weeks however strong the business is. Neither path is automatically right. The trade-off is speed and flexibility against rate, and that’s what we’d map out against your specific numbers before recommending either.
Source: ScotPac SME Growth Index (East & Partners research), June 2026, via The Adviser.
Share of SMEs who’d done so in the past 12 months, per ScotPac’s June 2026 SME Growth Index.
Why is so much Australian business lending unsecured in the first place?
Because most Australian businesses have very little to secure a loan against. The ABS counts of Australian businesses put the shape of the market at June 2026 like this:
| No employees at all | 1,818,575 businesses — 64.6% |
| Four employees or fewer | 2,508,175 — 89.1% |
| Twenty or more employees | 73,691 — 2.6% |
Nearly nine in ten Australian businesses have four employees or fewer, and almost two-thirds have none at all. A business that shape usually has no commercial property, no substantial plant and a balance sheet that looks thin next to its real trading. Secured lending has very little to grip. That isn’t a weakness in the businesses. It’s the structure of the market, and it’s why a product built on trading history and a director’s guarantee exists at all.
The same data carries a sobering line to read before you borrow to grow. Of the 626,523 businesses with one to four employees in June 2025, 10.6% had dropped back to no employees a year later, while only 6.5% grew past four. A micro business was about 1.6 times more likely to shrink than to scale. A lender pricing an unsecured facility is pricing that distribution, not making a judgement about you. It’s also the argument for borrowing against work you’ve already won, not work you expect to win.
What do lenders check, if not an asset?
Bank statement conduct is the main input, and lenders read it more closely than most owners expect. The rule of thumb is simple: a strong running balance, consistent cash flow, and few or no dishonoured payments. We run the same kind of bank statement analysis before you apply, so anything a lender’s credit model will flag shows up on our side first.
| Running balance | Shows whether the business is building a buffer or drawing one down |
| Cash flow | Irregular deposits read as risk even if the annual total is fine |
| Dishonours | Each one is a direct signal to the credit model, not a minor note |
| Time trading | Six to twelve-plus months is the usual floor most lenders work from |
| Existing debt | Including any ATO payment plan, see when this isn’t the right call, below |
Can an unsecured loan be a line of credit or an overdraft?
Yes. Revolving unsecured facilities exist alongside the term-loan style product. The trade-off is that these lenders will often build in the same caveat clauses, plus stricter covenants, particularly around taking on further working capital finance without the lender’s approval. If you think you’ll need a second facility down the track, read that clause before you sign, and get the lender’s sign-off before you take the second one on.
Two things people get wrong about unsecured lending
Can I pay it out early?
Yes, for most lenders now. Early payout benefits are standard across the current unsecured panel, and some lenders charge no payout penalty at all. Confirm it before you sign, because it varies by lender.
I already have one or two unsecured loans, what now?
Consolidate, and stretch the repayments over a longer term where you can. Andrew has done this many times in his broking career, for example refinancing two term loan lenders into one overdraft-style line of credit. It comes up most in wholesale and transport, where working capital keeps the business running. Start with why the business took on several loans, look at the next 12 months to two years, and refinance into a mid-to-long-term fix, not another stopgap.
When an unsecured loan isn’t the right call
If you have an ATO debt on your file, a major bank won’t approve you for finance of any kind while it’s there. Full stop. In that specific situation, some unsecured products end up cheaper than an ATO payment plan, and clearing that debt also improves your position for every application after it. That’s a real case where “unsecured and more expensive” isn’t the right frame.
More broadly, unsecured lending is best treated as a transitional product, not a permanent one. The aim is to build the trading history and bank statement conduct that gets you to a stronger lender (and eventually back to bank pricing), rather than staying on unsecured facilities indefinitely. If your business already qualifies for bank or near-bank terms, we’ll tell you that, not push an unsecured product because it settles faster.
Compare this against
Not sure an unsecured loan is the right shape?
Comfortable offering security in exchange for a better rate?
Secured term loans typically price lower once you’re willing to offer an asset or property.
See Term loans →High card sales and want funding assessed against takings?
An MCA prices and repays directly against your card sales.
See Merchant cash advances →Want a revolving facility instead of a lump sum?
A line of credit lets you draw, repay and redraw rather than taking one fixed amount.
See Lines of credit →Want the deeper, side-by-side breakdown? Read Unsecured vs secured business loan →
Already knocked back once?
Talk to us before you apply again yourself. Every hard enquiry on your file changes how the next lender reads your application, so make the next one count.
Want the numbers first? Try the business loan calculator →
Run a transport or logistics business? See how finance bridges 30-90 day terms →
Run a trades or construction business? See how finance differs by construction type →
New to working with a broker? See how a business loan broker works →
Give us the basics below and we’ll call you within the hour, or at the time you choose, then come back with the two or three offers worth your time.