Nearly a third (28%) of small business owners don’t feel financially confident unless they have a buffer big enough to cover running costs for a year, according to new research from credit card machine provider Paymentsense. The study found that despite this, more than four in 10 small business owners (41%) admit to having no such buffer in place, meaning as many as 2.3m UK small businesses may have no financial backup plan.

Bank loans accounted for 14 percent, while asset-based lending/factoring/invoice finance accounted for 16 percent of financial buffer.