# What a 100% cost cap means.

A cost cap sets a hard ceiling on what borrowing can ever cost. Every Credicorp product carries a 100% cap: the total cost can never exceed the amount borrowed. This guide explains what the cap covers, why it protects a company borrower, and shows the arithmetic with illustrative worked numbers.

## The cap, in one sentence

The cost of borrowing never overtakes the sum you borrowed.

A 100% cost cap means the total of everything you are charged to borrow — interest, fees, any late charges — can never exceed 100% of the amount borrowed. Borrow £400 and, whatever happens over the life of the borrowing, you can never be charged more than £400 in cost on top. The most you could ever repay is the £400 you took plus £400 in charges: £800, and not a penny more.

It is a ceiling, not a price. In practice, on a short product repaid on schedule, the cost lands far below the cap — a few pounds or tens of pounds. The cap is the backstop that fixes the worst case. It tells you the one number that can never be beaten, before you sign.

## What the cap covers

The total cost of credit — not just the interest.

The 100% figure is measured against the cost of borrowing as a whole, not one component of it. On Credicorp's products that means:
- **Interest** — the 0.25% per day charged on the outstanding principal of a Business Bridging Loan or the drawn balance of Credicorp Flex.
- **Establishment fee** — the one-time £5 fee on the Loan, or on the first drawdown of Flex.
- **The flat fee** — the 6% charge on a Credicorp Slice bill.
- **Late fees** — for example the £12 per missed instalment on Slice, which is itself separately capped.

Add all of that together, and the running total can never pass 100% of the amount borrowed. Once the charges reach the amount borrowed, they stop. This matters most in the situations where short-term borrowing can otherwise run away: a missed payment, a delay, a balance left outstanding longer than planned. The cap is precisely the protection for those cases.

## Worked numbers

Illustrative figures using the operator's published terms. The on-schedule cost is the realistic case; the cap is the worst case.

| Product | Amount borrowed | Typical cost, on schedule | Most cost can ever be (cap) | Most you could ever repay |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Bridging Loan | £300 | £27.50 over 30 days | £300 | £600 |
| Bridging Loan | £500 | £80.00 over 60 days | £500 | £1,000 |
| Credicorp Flex | £200 drawn | £15.00 over 20 days | £200 | £400 |
| Credicorp Slice | £600 bill | £36.00 (6% flat fee) | £600 | £1,200 |

Read the last two columns as the ceiling, not the bill. On a £300 Bridging Loan repaid in 30 days the cost is about £27.50, roughly a tenth of the way to the cap. The cap exists for the day something goes wrong — not for the day everything goes right.

Interest on the Loan and Flex is 0.25% per day on the outstanding or drawn balance; the £5 establishment fee is one-time. Slice is a 6% flat fee with a £12 late fee per missed instalment (itself capped). Every product is capped so the total cost never exceeds 100% of the amount borrowed.

## Why the cap protects a borrower

The danger with any short-term borrowing is not the cost when everything runs to plan — it is the cost when it does not. A balance left outstanding, a missed instalment, a delayed receipt: in the absence of a cap, charges on a small sum can compound until they dwarf the original amount. The 100% cap removes that tail risk entirely. The worst case is bounded, and it is bounded at a figure you can see before you borrow.

It also makes the borrowing easy to reason about. A director weighing up a £400 facility knows, with certainty, that the company's total exposure is at most £800 — never an open question, never a number that grows without limit. That certainty is part of why the company, not the director, is the borrower and why no personal guarantee is taken: the company's exposure is fixed and knowable. See [personal guarantees explained](/guides/personal-guarantees-explained/) for the related point.

A cap is a contractual protection the operator chooses to give. It is not a regulatory requirement here — body-corporate lending sits outside the FCA consumer-credit regime, as set out in [lending and regulation](/lending-and-regulation/). The protection comes from the product terms, not from the perimeter.

## Where to go next
- [Bridging-loan cost calculator](/calculators/bridging-loan-cost/) — see the cash cost against the cap
- [Flat fees versus APR](/guides/flat-fees-vs-apr/) — reading the cost of short-term borrowing
- [The three Credicorp products](/products/) — Loan, Flex and Slice in detail
- [Lending and regulation](/lending-and-regulation/) — why this is body-corporate lending under Article 60B
- [Glossary](/glossary/) — plain-English definitions of the terms used here

[Apply for a Business Bridging Loan at credicorp.co.uk →](https://credicorp.co.uk/business-loans/)