The UK has over three million self-employed individuals. So this lack of flexibility by many finance lenders is a problem that affects a large number of people. This is despite the fact that many company directors and self-employed people often earn more than many salaried employees.

Instead of pay slips, self-employed finance applicants may be asked to provide audited business accounts showing what their income has been over the last three years. However, in many cases, these accounts will not give an accurate reflection of how much money a self-employed person is making. This is because if the accountant who prepared the accounts is doing his job properly, he will have helped the self-employed person or business owner to offset as many allowable expenses as possible against tax. This has the effect of reducing the self-employed person's net profit - and it is this net profit from the accounts which the finance lender will use when calculating the amount of finance (if any) that they are prepared to offer.

The situation is even worse for people who have not been self-employed for very long, as they may not have been in business for long enough to have had three years' worth of accounts prepared.

Fortunately, there are a growing number of finance lenders who specialise in finance for self-employed people. These finance lenders understand the different and varied working patterns of self-employed finance applicants, contract workers, and people whose jobs are seasonal or whose income comes from multiple sources.