While both business loans and overdrafts involve borrowing money, they’re set up differently to meet different needs.

Business loan

A business loan has a set lending term and can suit small and large capital purchases. With a business loan you will make regular agreed repayments.

Business overdraft

Overdrafts are flexible short-term cash flow solutions that can help with the ups and downs of business by covering trading or seasonal cash flow cycles or managing working capital, e.g. paying suppliers or purchasing stock. Unlike business loans, overdrafts do not have set repayment commitments. You can draw on the funds in your overdraft, up to the agreed limit, and make deposits when funds are available. There is a fee that is applied to the limit, but you’ll only pay interest on the overdraft amount you use, not on the total limit.

With an unsecured business loan or overdraft you will not need to use your assets, like cash or property, as a form of security. Unsecured loans can be useful when you don’t want to tie your lending to your assets or if your assets are linked to other lending or contracts.

Financial providers tend to take an individual guarantee and indemnity from the director/s of the business taking out the unsecured lending. This means that if the business fails to meet its lending obligations, like repaying the loan, the director/s can be held responsible.

With ANZ Online Business Lending you will not need to provide an asset as security. Director/s of the business taking out the unsecured lending will need to provide an individual guarantee and indemnity.

To establish your financial eligibility, we’ll need to make a one-time only connection to your accounting software subscription. You’ll need to ensure that your financials are up-to-date and recent transactions are reconciled.

What information am I sharing?

Once you log into your accounting software subscription and provide consent, ANZ will securely consume and analyse your business’s financial data for the 12 full calendar months prior to your application, including:

• profit and loss
• balance sheet^disclaimer
• historical transactions and supporting information

We may also use this information to identify ways we can help your business in the future and discuss these with you. All information you share will also be used in line with our Privacy Policy, which you can find at www.anz.com/privacy.

If you are taking out an ANZ Business Overdraft, you’ll need a linked ANZ business transaction account. If you don't already have one, we will open an ANZ Business Advantage account for you. This low-cost transaction account gives you easy access to your money via ANZ Internet Banking, ATMs and branches.

Benefits of an ANZ Business Advantage account:

• Unlimited ANZ transactions per month^disclaimer
• ANZ Business Visa Debit cards^disclaimer and ANZ Internet Banking available
• Daily payment limits of up to $50,000 (with ANZ Shield)
• $10 monthly account servicing fee

If you’re taking out an ANZ Business Loan, a fee-free ANZ Business Offset account will be opened for disbursing your loan and making regular direct loan repayments.

Keeping surplus funds in a linked ANZ Business Offset account will help to reduce your monthly interest charges.  Interest will be charged on the amount of your outstanding loan balance less the balance of surplus funds held in your linked offset account. Monthly account and transaction fees waived.^disclaimer

At the end of the 20 minute online application, it’s possible that you’ll receive a conditional approval. This means that you’re approved for credit from us, subject to our team verifying the information you provided and checking your existing account conduct (where applicable).

It should take no more than two business days before we can provide the final, unconditional approval. There may be instances where we need extra information from you, which could extend this timeframe.

ANZ Online Business Lending supports unsecured business lending. If your existing ANZ business lending is unsecured, you may be eligible to apply for additional unsecured lending via ANZ Online Business Lending up to a total limit of $200,000 (inclusive of your existing lending and your proposed lending).

If the existing lending you have with ANZ has security attached to it (like property, an asset or cash), you can speak to one of our specialist business bankers about the best lending options for your needs.

At the end of the ANZ Online Business Lending application we will ask for your consent and the consent of any other directors to complete a credit check. The credit check involves ANZ accessing credit reports from credit reporting bodies. These credit reports contain information which assists us to assess your application, including information about your credit history with other credit providers.

Credit check for multi-director companies

If your business has multiple directors, you’ll need to provide contact details for each director so that we can contact them and get their digital consent to conduct an individual credit check.

No outstanding tax liabilities means you have no outstanding tax amounts owing to the ATO that are past the original due date, which includes no payment arrangements or deferrals (including COVID-19).

We’re here to help you get through the ups and downs of business. Check out our other lending solutions or speak to your business banker today.

By applying through ANZ Online Business Lending, we’ll collect your personal and business information to assess your application.

We may use this personal and business information to progress your application, including contacting you about incomplete applications and to request a credit report from a credit reporting authority.

You, or other company directors, can call us on 13 13 14 at any time to withdraw consent to this use of your personal or business information, or to find out more. You can also read more about the collection of personal information at ANZ's Privacy Centre.