Benchmarks

UK alt-lender CAC benchmarks 2026 — cost per funded loan by channel

Q: How does CAC vary by channel?

Broker channel: 1.5%–3% origination fee on the loan size, often translating to £600–£1,500 per funded £50k loan. Paid search (Google Ads): £500–£900 per funded loan when blended across non-converting click traffic. Outbound BDR: £150–£300 once team is mature. Content / SEO: £80–£200 for organic-led lenders but with 12+ month payback. Referral / embedded partnerships: £100–£250 per funded loan.

Q: Why do brokers charge so much?

Two reasons. First, the broker handles top-of-funnel acquisition, application packaging, and primary qualification — work the lender would otherwise need to staff. Second, brokers have established BDR teams and direct relationships with SME owners, which are hard for a lender to replicate without years of investment. The trade-off: broker-sourced borrowers tend to have lower brand loyalty and higher churn on renewal.

What it actually costs to acquire a funded SME borrower in the UK alt-lender market, by channel. Median figures, distribution, and the implications for product economics.

By Borrowsignal · 4 June 2026 · 7 min read

If you're pricing your alt-lending product in 2026, the cost of acquiring a funded borrower is the second-largest line in your unit economics after the cost of capital. It's also the most variable across channels and the easiest to mis-budget. This piece aggregates published CAC ranges from the latest annual reports and broker-fee schedules of the major UK alt-lenders, plus current channel-level data from AltFi News and our own conversations with UK lender CFOs.

Headline: median blended CAC for a funded UK SME loan sits between £280 and £600 as of Q2 2026. But that "blended" figure hides a 6× spread between the cheapest channel (outbound BDR for mature teams) and the most expensive (broker on a £50k facility). Knowing your channel mix is more useful than knowing the average.

CAC by channel — the spread

Channel	Median CAC per funded loan	Range	Notes
Broker	£900	£600–£1,500	1.5%–3% of loan size; high-quality but expensive
Paid search (Google Ads)	£700	£500–£900	Blended across non-converting click traffic; rising YoY
Paid social (LinkedIn)	£600	£400–£800	Better for higher-AOV facilities (Enterprise tier)
Outbound BDR (mature)	£220	£150–£300	Excludes infrastructure / data costs; mature team only
Outbound BDR (new)	£600	£400–£1,200	First 6–12 months while team learns its ICP
Content / SEO	£140	£80–£200	Long payback (12+ months); compounding
Referral / partnership	£180	£100–£250	Tide → lending, Coconut → lending, etc.
Embedded (POS partner)	£150	£100–£220	YouLend, Liberis model — partner takes a cut

Why the spread is so wide

Three drivers explain most of the channel variance:

Targeting precision. A broker pre-qualifies the borrower before sending them — there's a real reason the cost is high. Paid search casts a wide net and most clicks don't convert. Outbound BDR (mature) sits in the middle: targeted, but the lender pays for time.
Channel maturity. A six-month-old outbound team learning its ICP burns £500–£1,200 per funded loan. The same team at year two, with a tuned script and a dialled-in lead source, lands closer to £200.
Lifetime expectations. Brokers often deliver borrowers with weaker renewal economics (lower LTV), so the £900 CAC is partly compensation for higher churn. Direct channels (content, BDR-direct) deliver borrowers with stronger renewal — same headline CAC implies different real unit economics.

What healthy looks like

Rough rule of thumb for an unsecured UK working-capital loan:

Average facility £50k
APR 16% (median, per our Q2 2026 pricing benchmarks)
First-year net revenue per customer: £6k–£8k after risk costs and cost of capital
Median customer takes 2.3 facilities over 5 years (cohort renewal data, Lendable + iwoca disclosures)
5-year LTV: £18k–£25k

Against £18k–£25k LTV, a £400 CAC implies LTV/CAC of 45–60×. That's healthy. £900 broker CAC drops it to 20–25× — still profitable, lower margin. £1,500 broker CAC on a £20k facility (smaller deal) starts to wobble.

The 2026 shift — paid is getting harder

Two trends squeeze the paid-channel CAC numbers in 2026:

Search CPC inflation. Top UK fintech-lender keywords ("business loan UK", "working capital", "invoice finance") run £8–£15 per click in 2026, up from £5–£9 in 2024. Click-to-funded conversion has stayed broadly flat at 1.5%–3%. That arithmetic pushes paid-search CAC up by 30–50% in two years.
LinkedIn quality decline for B2B financial services. The cost of decision-maker reach has held, but reply rates have halved as the inbox saturates. Outbound on LinkedIn now needs more touchpoints to convert.

The shift is pushing more lenders toward outbound-direct and content-led acquisition — channels where CAC compounds favourably as the team and content library mature.

Implications for Borrowsignal pricing

For a UK alt-lender with a £400 average CAC and a £18k 5-year LTV:

A £149/mo data subscription that surfaces 600 qualified UK SMEs per month, of which 0.5% convert to a funded loan, generates 3 funded loans per month — gross new MRR contribution of £54k (3 × £18k LTV / 5 years × 12 months).
The data subscription pays back in the first month, at any reasonable conversion rate.

That's the BDR-economics math behind why even a heavily-paid-search lender will trial a £149/mo data subscription — the worst case is one funded loan in 90 days, the upside is 30× the cost per month.

How to apply this to your own numbers

Pull your last 12 months funded loans from your CRM/loan-mgmt system.
Tag each by primary acquisition channel — broker, paid, BDR, organic, referral.
Sum the cost per channel (broker fees, paid spend, BDR salary × time, content cost).
Divide. That's your channel-level CAC. Compare against the medians above; outliers either reflect channel maturity or a real over/under-investment.
Once you have a per-channel number, the next move is calibrating spend allocation. If your broker CAC is £1,400 and BDR CAC is £250, the math is rarely about "stop using brokers" — it's about whether BDR can scale to absorb the next £1M in lending without breaking quality.

Frequently asked

What is the average CAC for a UK alt-lender in 2026?

Median blended CAC across UK alt-lenders for a funded SME loan sits in the £280–£600 range as of Q2 2026, based on disclosed CAC ranges in iwoca, Funding Circle, and Lendable annual reports and broker-fee schedules tracked by AltFi News. The blended figure hides large channel variance: outbound BDR-led acquisition tends to be lower (£150–£300 per funded loan) for mature teams, while paid-search-led acquisition sits higher (£500–£900).

How does CAC vary by channel?

Broker channel 1.5%–3% origination fee (£600–£1,500 per £50k loan); Paid search £500–£900; LinkedIn paid £400–£800; Outbound BDR mature £150–£300; Content/SEO £80–£200; Referral £100–£250; Embedded £100–£220.

What CAC ratio is healthy?

For an unsecured working-capital loan with first-year revenue £6k–£15k per customer (depending on facility size and APR), a CAC of £400 implies a payback period of 1–3 months and a 5-year LTV/CAC ratio in the 15:1–30:1 range. Healthy for the sector.

Why do brokers charge so much?

Two reasons. They handle top-of-funnel acquisition + application packaging + primary qualification (work the lender would staff). They have established BDR teams and direct SME relationships that are hard for a lender to replicate. Trade-off: broker-sourced borrowers tend to have lower brand loyalty and higher renewal churn.