FloatWell — Cashflow Foresight for UK Small Businesses

Business Plan

Executive Summary

FloatWell is a UK-based fintech SaaS company that gives small businesses a real-time, AI-powered window into their cash future — and acts before a crisis hits. By connecting to Open Banking feeds and accounting platforms (Xero, QuickBooks), FloatWell builds a rolling 13-week cashflow forecast, surfaces the exact date a business is likely to run short, automates invoice-chasing, and offers embedded short-term working-capital credit lines.

The problem is acute. ~50,000 UK small businesses become insolvent each year, and the majority cite cashflow failure — not lack of profitability — as the primary cause. Most business owners discover a cash crunch when it is already upon them, not three to six weeks out when something could still be done.

FloatWell fixes the timing gap. Predictive intelligence replaces reactive panic.

Target customers: UK businesses with 2–50 employees in trades, hospitality, creative agencies, and e-commerce — roughly 1.4 million addressable firms.

Revenue model: Monthly SaaS subscription (£29–£99/month depending on tier), plus a lending take-rate (~4–6% annualised facility fee) on embedded working-capital drawdowns.

Year 1 target: 800 paying customers, ~£480k ARR. Year 3 target: 12,000 customers, ~£8.2m ARR plus ~£1.1m lending revenue.

Funding ask: £1.8m seed round to fund 18 months of product buildout, regulatory groundwork, and initial go-to-market.

FloatWell is led by a founding team with combined experience across open-banking infrastructure, SME lending, and B2B SaaS growth. The UK's 2024 rollout of Variable Recurring Payments and deepening Open Banking adoption create a rare timing window. FloatWell intends to own the cashflow-intelligence layer for UK small business before any well-capitalised incumbent wakes up to it.

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Company Description

Legal name: FloatWell Ltd (to be incorporated in England and Wales) Headquarters: London, with remote-first operations Stage: Pre-seed / seed Sector: Fintech — cashflow intelligence and embedded SME lending

FloatWell was founded on a simple observation: the tools that help small businesses understand their money are either backward-looking (accounting software) or too blunt (a static spreadsheet). Neither tells an owner when they will run out of cash or what to do about it with enough lead time to matter.

The company will be structured as a UK private limited company, regulated as a Credit Broker initially (to refer lending facilities underwritten by a partner lender), with a roadmap toward holding its own FCA Consumer Credit Act permissions or becoming an Appointed Representative of an FCA-authorised firm by Month 12. Open Banking data access will be managed under FCA-registered AISP (Account Information Service Provider) status, either held directly or via an AISP partner such as TrueLayer or Plaid.

Core values: • Radical transparency — FloatWell shows the maths behind every forecast • Earned trust — no dark patterns, no selling customer data, no hidden lending fees • Speed to insight — an owner connects their accounts and has a meaningful forecast within ten minutes

FloatWell sits at the intersection of three maturing UK infrastructure layers: Open Banking (now used by ~11 million UK consumers and businesses), cloud accounting (Xero has ~1 million UK subscribers), and embedded finance (BNPL and working-capital credit increasingly delivered inside SaaS tools). The company is positioned to compound all three trends into a single, indispensable dashboard for the underserved SME owner.

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Problem & Customer

The core problem: UK small businesses are profitable on paper and dead in the bank. The average SME carries ~£23,000 in outstanding receivables at any time (est., FSB data). Payment terms stretch to 30–60 days; wages, rent, and supplier invoices fall due weekly or monthly. The mismatch creates rolling cash gaps that owners manage by instinct, overdraft, and delayed supplier payments — all of which erode relatio