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Business competitions and awards in the UK

A comprehensive list of business competitions and awards open to small and medium sized uk businesses.

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There is a range of business competitions and awards open to small and medium-sized businesses in the UK that can provide funding , support, press and much more. For earlier stage businesses, these competitions can be an excellent way to support and test new business ideas or concept and providing the resources/business networks to build an MVP or scale your startup. For more developed businesses, awards can offer industry exposure, prestige and in some cases growth capital (up to £50,000).

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Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of business awards and competitions for small and medium-sized businesses (with details on each entry including prize types/amounts, entry criteria useful information pre-application and where to apply).

Growing Business Awards

The Growing Business Awards is an annual business awards ceremony brought to you by Real Deals Media in conjunction with a range of corporate sponsors; the award aims to recognise established start-ups and medium-sized businesses which achieve exceptional levels in terms of growth and innovation.

The Growing Business Awards categories include Entrepreneur of the Year, Growing Business of the Year (Large, Small and Medium), Innovator of the Year, Online Business of the Year, Rural Business of the Year, Marketing Campaign of the Year and a range of others. You can find information on previous winners and shortlisted businesses here .

Prize/award: There appear to be no prize amounts, just awards providing recognition and exposure.

Apply: To find out more and about applications and register your interest/ apply you contact them via this page .

Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards

The Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards are aimed at student and graduate business ventures in their early stages from their UK partner universities.

For people that are in the early stages of their business. You can check out previous winners here . To be eligible to apply, you cannot have been running for more than one year, have not received over £100,000 in finance/funding or have more than five employees.

Prize/award: Winners can receive cash prizes as well as mentoring and support to grow their startup or small business (Prize money up to £90,000).

Apply: To apply, contact your university’s enterprise department or your local Branch Manager based on campus (Santander have a central list with links to the relevant university pages here ).

CleanTech Innovate

Cleantech Innovate celebrates the latest in low-carbon technologies and innovations in the UK. A shortlist of companies who apply to the competition each year get to present in London and are then evaluated on four criteria: impact, innovation, long-term vision, and commercial viability (to determine a winner/s).

You can find and review the stories of previous CleanTech Innovate award winners here .

Prize/award: The prize is unclear / if any, assuming the main benefit is the recognition/exposure an award would generate for a young company within the CleanTech sector.

Apply: Applications open annually for a limited amount of time, to find out about applying for the latest award, please use the link above.

Shell LiveWIRE Awards (Smarter Future Programme )

One of the longest running small business awards in the country, the Shell LiveWIRE Awards aims to support young entrepreneurs with smart and innovative ideas that meet the energy and resource needs of a fast-growing population (both in the UK and globally). Under this banner, Shell runs the Smarter Future Programme which this entry provides detail on.

Prize/award: Smarter Future Awards come in the form of start-up grants and can up to £5,000, the awards in generally run every month. Each month one 16-30-year-old entrepreneur with an idea that meets the criteria will win. Winners have access to exclusive Shell events and workshops and the opportunity to be considered for the annual £25,000 Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Apply: To apply for the Shell LiveWIRE Awards, visit their website .

CleanTech Challenge

The CleanTech Challenge is an international business plan competition run by University College London (UCL) and London Business School (LBS), focusing on providing funding, exposure and advice for innovative clean technology product ideas and teams.

The competition was founded in the idea of bringing together traditional business and young students to create viable start-ups in the CleanTech Space. Entrants are mentored by industry experts from the CleanTech, entrepreneurial and related sectors. You can check out their FAQs section for more information.

Prize/award: Teams compete over three rounds for a £10,000 prize.

Apply: You can find the relevant details in the following link.

Shell Springboard Awards

The Shell Springboard programme supports the brightest UK businesses innovating for a lower carbon future. Any UK-registered SME can apply to Shell Springboard, but they must be focused on reducing carbon emissions, be commercially viable and innovative.

Since its launch in 2005, Shell Springboard awarded over £3.5 million to over 86 SMEs at the cutting-edge of the low-carbon economy.

Prize/award: In 2019, over £350,000 in equity-free funding will be awarded, as well as feedback from industry-leading academics, investors and policymakers to help scale-up their enterprises.

Apply: You can apply to the Shell Springboard Awards here .

Lloyds Bank National Business Awards

Run by Lloyds the National Business Awards are for start-ups to SMEs to large firms. The Awards guarantee a high level of exposure and networking opportunities as over 1,000 business people, politicians, investors and press attend the ceremony.

Each year, the categories change, go to the homepage menu for an up to date list.

Prize/award: The awards are quite well established and provide high-level recognition.

Apply: You can apply for the National Business Awards here .

The British Business Awards

Through 18 different awards, The British Business Awards aim to recognise leaders in the small business community. Annual categories vary from Insurance provider of the year to Retail business of the year, to Disruptor of the year and more.

Companies need to be nominated for consideration; this can be done by the company itself or by a third party.

Prize/award: There is no cash prize; the awards celebrate the leaders of different small business sectors (upside is receiving a high level of media exposure.)

Apply: You can’t apply for the awards you must be nominated by another business/person, you can through the nomination process here .

EDF Pulse Award

As the world’s leading electricity producer, EDF innovates within its various areas of business to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage more restrained and efficient use of energy.

The goal of the EDF Pulse awards is to showcase and provide tangible support to European start-ups that are joining forces, creating and inventing tomorrow’s future in regards to Energy.

The prize is based on four categories: Smart Home, Smart Business, Smart Health, and Smart City. You must be a startup registered in a European country to be eligible.

Prize/award: Beyond recognition, each winner receive a media/marketing campaign worth up to up to €100,000.

Apply: To check out the full eligibility criteria and to find out more about applying, click the link in above.

FSB Celebrating Small Business Awards

The Celebrating Small Business Awards are for SMEs across the UK (businesses with less than 250 employees) by awarding in 11 different categories. Companies can apply for free for an unlimited number of categories.

Winning an award will make your business stand out and allow you to network with finalists, high profile judges, sponsors and more. Check out the award categories here .

Prize/award: Previous awards have meant that each category winner receives £2,000. The judges also chose an overall national winner who was awarded another £10,000. It’s not clear if this still the case or the award just provides exposure/recognition .

Apply: Use the link above to find out more about applications.

NACUE Varsity Pitch Competition

The annual NACUE Varsity Pitch Competition recognises the most innovative startups from UK students and graduates. You can enter into a range of categories.

Prize/award: A panel of industry experts will select the final winner who can win a prize of up to £15,000 in cash.

Apply: You can apply via F6S (click the apply button on the homepage linked above, the F6S link changes, each year so we haven’t linked it here).

The Prince’s Responsible Business Awards

The annual Responsible Business Awards are presented by Business in the Community and seek to celebrate the amazing social value and societal impact, being delivered by organisations right across the UK, and internationally.

Awards are given to those businesses that are having a genuinely positive impact on people’s lives and the communities that surround them. The awards are open to companies of any size, sector and location. Every award entrant receives expert feedback on their entry, which at the very least may help to strengthen their business approach going forward.

Prize/award: Prize amounts for winners are unspecified. There is a range of award categories, including The Age-Friendly Teams Award, The Connected Places Award, The Gender Equality Award and more.

Apply: To enter the award, use the link above to access the specific award category application details.

The Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition

The Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition is looking for ground-breaking ideas to help reduce London’s carbon emissions. The competition is open to students and recent graduates of London universities (both commercial and non-commercial ideas/projects are welcome). Applications have to be submitted in one go online, so make sure you to check out the questions and prepare your application offline beforehand. If you have questions, you can always e-mail them .

Prize/award: You can win up to £20,000 (there are three prize funds) and undefined support from City Hall to turn your idea into reality.

Apply: Use the above link to find out about the latest application details.

Hatch Business Competition

Hatch is a business competition to support entrepreneurs who are interested in growing their business by getting the opportunity to trade in an established retail zone/environment (without the taking on the extortionate cost).

Prize/award: Up to 3 months rent, rates and utilities covered in a major retail location (typically on offer are shops within shopping centres). You’ll also get a year’s free membership to British Inde pendent Retailers Association (BIRA) and expert support/advice from the retail centre team (of the location you choose).

Apply: You can apply to the Hatch competition here .

Inactive business competitions & awards

This award/competition appear to be no longer active, they’ve been kept on the list as sometimes they remain dormant for a number of years before becoming active again. So its worth checking them via search if your exhausted all other competition and awards possibilities for your business.

Digital Entrepreneur Awards

The Digital Entrepreneur Awards are dedicated to online entrepreneurship coming from the UK. The awards celebrate the best of a rapidly growing technology industry and have been recognising Britain most exceptional online talent for over a decade. You can find a list of previous finalists and winners here.

Prize/award: The awards are given to small, medium and large businesses, with several different categories open for entry.

Apply: You can apply by enquiring through the following contact form to find out application details.

Future 100 Awards

The Future 100 awards recognise young entrepreneurs of ages 20 to 35, who show top entrepreneurial and innovation abilities to develop a socially and environmentally responsible business project.

Prize/award: Prizes are given to top business projects which maintain a balance between the achievement of economic, environmental and social goals. The amount is not specified.

Verb U Dell Social Innovation Challenge

Verb U competition is a part of the Dell Social Innovation Challenge, which supports university students and graduates across the world to start their business. This competition enables university students who want to gain global exposure and collaborate with fellow social entrepreneurs.

Prize/award: Dell Social Innovation Challenge (DSIC) has so far engaged students and social entrepreneurs from different regions and has awarded more than $800,000 in prizes.

China UK Entrepreneurship Challenge

The China-UK Challenge aims to encourage new business ventures between China and the United Kingdom. It is intended to simulate the real-world process of entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early-stage investors and venture capital firms . The competition is open to university teams in the UK and China, which have a current and genuine University connection.

Prize/award: There are £13,000 cash prizes and investment opportunities of £500,000 for the best business plans.

Nectar Business Small Business Awards

Since 2005 nectar business has given rewards to British business, including team dinners, holidays and trips to the cinema.

Prize/award: The winner of each category will receive 50,000 Nectar points, £2,000, nationwide publicity and an invitation to an exclusive roundtable event and awards ceremony.

FedEx Small Business Grant UK

FedEx is helping small businesses with the FedEx Small Business Grant UK. Giving the chance to win £20,000, FedEx is looking to help these companies achieve their international ambitions .

Prize/award: Two grants will be awarded: a Grand Prize of £20,000; and a Runner-Up Prize of £10,000.

L’Oreal Brandstorm

If you’re a student, you can form a team of 3 and take up the challenge of innovating for one of L’Oreal’s brands. Teams go through pitching, a national selection, a regional selection, and two are announced winners at the world finals.

Prize/award: There’s a tech award (10, 000€), brand award (10, 000€), CSR trophy (5, 000€), and a flight to Paris. There are also mentoring, coaching, and networking opportunities .

Shake to Create

Shake to Create is a competition for SMEs to win 35 free hours of creative work. You need to create a brief video pitch on what your company needs to keep up the growth and why they should choose your business. To apply companies must be over one year old, UK based and not an existing client of Shake It Up Creative Ltd.

Prize/award: The winner gets 35 free hours of creative work for their growing business. It includes design, marketing, PR and website development services (does not include SEO services.)

bfa HSBC Franchisor of the Year

The HSBC Franchisor awards recognise the best within the franchising industry. Receiving this honour in Birmingham will also help gain exposure, boost your brand image and solidify your achievements as a franchisor. There are five categories, including Successful expansion overseas and Staying ahead of the competition, and you can apply for more than one.

Prize/award: The prize is the recognition in front of over 350 distinguished guests from the franchising industry.

bfa HSBC Franchisee of the Year

The HSBC Franchisee awards will go to the franchisees who show the dedication, passion and commitment to their brand and trajectory. The five annual categories are Female franchisee of the year, Young franchisee of the year, Customer Focus franchisee of the year, Microbusiness franchisee of the year and Franchisee innovation.

Prize/award: The awards will recognise you as one of the UK’s most exceptional franchisees of the year and as a leading example in the industry.

Related: A guide to business angels

MIT IDEAS Global Challenge

This award/competition is open but only to MIT students (who can be of British origin, due to limited access we’ve moved to the bottom of the list).

IDEAS provides funding to social entrepreneurship projects led by MIT students. Teams have to create projects that offer solutions to social issues at a local or global scale and are mentored throughout the year. In the process, they can also receive development grants as well as further support.

Prize/award: Winning teams receive up to $15,000 to launch their projects.

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The Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition Grand Final 2023

For the University Start a company or social venture The Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition The Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition Grand Final 2023

Welcome to the Grand Final of the Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition

Thank you for joining us at Peterhouse Theatre for the Grand Final of the Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition. Run by Cambridge Enterprise and the Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge , The Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition has become a key annual programme in the University’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and has spawned a number of successful spin-out companies including Nu Quantum, Porotech, Semarion and Xampla.

Cambridge Enterprise

Part of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Enterprise is responsible for supporting the translation of University research to create globally leading economic and social impact.

We do this by helping innovators, experts and entrepreneurs use commercial avenues to develop their ideas and expertise for the benefit of society, the economy, themselves and the University. Liaising with organisations both locally and globally, we offer expert advice and support in commercialisation and social enterprise, including help with academic consultancy services; the protection, development and licensing of ideas; new company and social enterprise creation and seed funding.

Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge

Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge (EPOC) is a grassroots organisation representing the business face of the Cambridge research community.

With over 4,000 postdocs at the University of Cambridge, these researchers are a core strength of the Cambridge innovation ecosystem. EPOC represents, supports and promotes an entrepreneurial mindset and commercial skills within this community, identifying three core challenges to maximising its impact: enterprise visibility, changing the culture of research labs and building entrepreneurial researchers. By addressing them we contribute to making Cambridge one of the world’s top innovation hubs.

Order of the evening


	Welcome drinks reception (The Lubbock Room)
	Welcome and sponsor speeches - Cambridge Enterprise, Christine Martin - Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge, Maximillian Ge - Mishcon de Reya, Emma Millar - Cambridge Innovation Capital, Chris Tapper - Oxbridge Angels, Enzo Lamberti - ideaSpace, Ben Hartley
	Pitches from finalists
	Speakers - Anne Dobrée, Founders at The University of Cambridge - Professor Andy Neely MBE, University of Cambridge - Audience Choice Award, presented by Caroline Hyde from IE Cambridge
	Awards presentation - Benjamin Droguet, CEO and Founder of Sparxell (2022 winner)
	Drinks reception
	Close

Prizes to be awarded

Prize sponsors, cambridge innovation capital.

Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) is a leading venture capital investor backing and building category-leading deep tech and life sciences companies. Their focus on the Cambridge ecosystem, and unique relationship with the University of Cambridge, provides them with access to excellent investment opportunities.

They have in excess of £0.5 billion of assets under management and have invested in more than 35 deep tech and life science companies in fields as diverse as surgical robotics, flexible electronics, microbiome science, genomic diagnosis, quantum computing software, peptide technology and AI decision-making software.

With their knowledge, experience and connections we support our portfolio and community to positively impact society, whilst remaining focused on our commercial objective to optimise value for our stakeholders.

Cambridge Innovation Capital are sponsoring the second place prize.

Find out more

Oxbridge Angels

Oxbridge Angels are uniting founder-friendly financing with a global network of world-class multi-industry experts to accelerate and fund early-stage companies.

They are founded by Executive MBA alumni with 10-30 years’ work experience. They connect entrepreneurs with the financial and human resources required to execute their game plans.

Oxbridge Angels are sponsoring the third place prize.

Competition sponsors

Mishcon de reya.

On 1 January 2023, Taylor Vinters merged with Mishcon de Reya, and together they are committed to shaping a better world through innovation.

Mishcon de Reya is an independent law firm, which now employs over 1400 people with more than 670 lawyers offering a wide range of legal services to organisations and individuals.

With a presence in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Singapore and Hong Kong (through its association with Karas So LLP), the firm services an international community of clients and provides advice in situations where the constraints of geography often do not apply.

The work the firm undertakes is cross-border, multi-jurisdictional and often complex, spanning six core practice areas: Corporate; Real Estate; Dispute; Resolution; Employment; Innovation and Private.

Our Finalists

Molly haugen presenting aetosense.

Aetosense led by Molly Haugen (Department of Engineering)

Making low-cost monitoring of ultrafine particles accessible to all communities, buildings, and public settings through MiniCPC technology. Their sensor is an order of magnitude lower in cost and size than current competitors due to their redesign of heat management and flow control, which they have patented.

Mark Carrington presenting Oxonium Energy

Oxonium Energy led by Mark Carrington (Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry)

Stabilising battery operation in air for greater system robustness, enabling aqueous cell voltages above 1.5v and substantially lowering projected energy costs relative to other existing RFB technologies.

Ahmed Elwaraky presenting K-Stem

K-Stem led by Ahmed Elwaraky (Department of Haematology, Cambridge Stem Cell Institute)

Revolutionising hematopoietic stem cell transplantation as a highly effective treatment for blood cancers, age-related blood diseases, and specific autoimmune disorders by providing an advanced platform for personalized stem cell transplantation.

Ismail Sami presenting Mostli

Mostli led by Ismail Sami (Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy)

Enabling high energy-density to weight and long-life lithium-sulfur batteries through the creation of a new cathode material. This allows the electrification of current weight-critical technologies and opens up fundamentally new modes of transport such as all-electric passenger aviation, which could help facilitate the net-zero transition.

Kamil Sokolowski presenting Semantics

Elaheh mostaani presenting xinatec.

XinaTec led by Elaheh Mostaani (Department of Engineering)

Applying modern AI-enhanced methodology to automate the design process of filter technology from specification to additive manufacturing, improving mobile-direct-to-satellite internet performance.

Our Speakers

Dr Anne Dobrée

Director of Programming, Cambridge Enterprise

Formerly leading the Seed Funds team at Cambridge Enterprise, and now working with the Senior Leadership Team on future projects and planning, Anne has previously overseen strong growth in our investment activities.

Anne will be presenting Founders at the University of Cambridge

Founders at the University of Cambridge will provide extensive support to founders as they take companies forward, through pre-seed investment, intensive mentoring and programmatic support. It will powerfully cut through the complexity of the Cambridge ecosystem, supporting founders through action-based programmes to help them build global scalable businesses.

Professor Andy Neely OBE

Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations, University of Cambridge

Professor Andy Neely OBE is Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge and former Head of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM). He was the Founding Director of the Centre for Digital Built Britain and the Cambridge Service Alliance.

Professor Neely is widely recognised for his work on the servitisation of manufacturing, as well as his work on performance measurement and management. He received an OBE for services to Research and to University/Industry Collaboration in 2020.

Benjamin Droguet

CEO & Founder of Sparxell, the 2022 winners of the Chris Abell Postdoc Business Plan Competition

Sparxell is creating the next generation of colours and effects using plant-based cellulose for use as pigments, glitter, sequins, and films.

Glitters can take many sizes and shapes (from the sequins used in fashion to the fine powder used in the paint of 1 in 4 cars sold in Europe or found in cosmetics), yet they all contain problematic microplastics, metals, or mineral oxides. Science warns us that these products accumulate and enter our water supply.

Sparxell has created safer and easier-to-source alternative pigments with vibrant colour and benefits that appeal to health and eco-conscious consumers and companies alike.

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Clean Tech Challenge 2024

Changing the world for better.

Rewarding the next student led innovative clean technology ideas

The competition

The CleanTech Challenge is a global business plan competition for students with innovative clean technology ideas, jointly hosted by the London Business School and University College London. It began in 2011 and has been run successfully for the past 12 years. Winners of the international chapters compete as finalists in the UK competition.

The objective

Great Cleantech technologies emerging from research often flounder through lack of good commercial input early on. Meanwhile, management schools have many entrepreneurial students who are worried about the environment but who lack impactful ideas to work on. To bridge this gap, the interdisciplinary competition was created.

Who can enter

The Challenge is open to all current university students (undergraduate and postgraduate) enrolled in a degree programme at a recognised Higher Education Institution anywhere in the world as of 1 January 2024.

Our Partners

Competition Guidelines

The competition takes place over three different stages between January and April each year. Submit your proposals before Feb 4th 2024.

All you need is an innovative Cleantech idea. Submit a 200 word pitch by Feb 4th 2024 clearly outlining (i) the idea, (ii) cleantech impact, and (iii) why it would be commercially viable.

We want to meet you! Invited entries will require a short 2 minute video submission introducing the members of your team and a high level overview of your Clean Tech proposal. Deadline for videos is Feb 18th 2024.

Selected entries are asked to develop their idea and present a pitch deck by March 10th 2024. The deck will be reviewed by prospective investors.

Finalists will undergo training from industry experts from the environmental, entrepreneurial, and science sectors over the course of April. Bootcamp finals take place between April 23rd - 24th where finalists present a 10-minute pitch.

Rewarding innovation

Students compete in cross-functional teams combining technical and business skills. Startup ideas are expected to be at the concept phase at which point they would likely only attract pre-seed funding.

>500 Entries

We judge hundreds of applications every year

£20,000 Prize Fund

Access to world class clean tech venture capitalists

Investor Network

Get mentoring from the best clean tech entrepreneurs

Past Events

Will you create the next clean technology idea.

Past winners

Congratulations to our most recent winners.

Opportunities

Get confidence, connections and capital

Ready to take your startup to the next level? The Pitch is a free programme that provides advice, support, mentoring and investor introductions to ambitious founders across the UK.

The community for startups to grow and get investment

Our national business growth programme is designed for startup success. We give purpose-led founders the tools they need to change the world by providing a friendly, accessible environment to help them build confidence, hone their pitch and get investment ready.

The Pitch wouldn’t be possible without our partners. We work with organisations that share our values and help startups reach their goals.

Competition

The pitch competition.

We’re more than a pitching competition. Since 2008, The Pitch has evolved into a complete programme of support and has helped founders raise tens of millions in investment.

What you get from competing…

Regional finals, watch our events, investors per year, average investor meetings per founder.

Share your story and pitch your way to investment.

Get support for your business

Opportunity

Win over £1,500 worth of microsoft ai powered tech.

Pop up with Tide to win £5K cash and business advice

Get pitch perfect: Watch a compilation of our favourite startup pitches

Seven ways to build a community as your startup grows

Nine step guide: How to find and approach angel investors

Testimonials

What our community members think….

“Taking part in the Pitch was great fun. It’s always good to talk about the business and to share the experiences we’ve had. I learned a lot from doing that. It’s useful to get feedback but it’s also great to meet other people in the room and hear other people’s stories too. We were so grateful to be introduced to Crowdcube and go on to raise a seed round on the platform.”

Claire Ladkin, founder of All About The Cooks

“The Pitch was a chance for us to get out and tell our story of why we’re building a company like this, and also get market feedback and validation that what we’re building is definitely needed.”

Gaby Mendes, founder of TalkTwenties

“Being part of The Pitch was more than just a challenge, it allowed us to get clearer on our proposition to investors – 90 seconds isn’t very long after all – and gave us a huge amount of confidence about our business. We’re so grateful for the experience and the mentoring we’ve had since the event has been invaluable!”

Kate Tilbury, founder of Rowdy Kind

Find insights and advice to help your startup grow.

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Applications for 2024 are now closed but if you want to stay up-to-date on when they re-open then why not join our community?

We love to regularly share educational content for founders, as well as exciting event updates and unmissable opportunities from our partners.

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Schools & departments

Business Plan Competitions

These competitions identify and support up-and-coming, innovative, high-growth entrepreneurs.

Participants receive business training, networking, one-to-one support, expert & professional advice, plus kudos and cash-prizes for the winners. 

Some competition streams are open to pre-startup/spinout projects, whilst others are for early-stage companies that have already formed.

Dr Genevieve Patanaude, Founder, Earth Blox

Earth Blox is a startup founded by Dr Genevieve Patanaude (pictured) from the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences. Earth Blox launched its services in May 2020, providing cloud-based software-as-a-service that empowers anyone, anywhere to create their own Earth observation and satellite data solutions. It is already being used in a number of sectors including insurance, disaster response and conflict management.

In Autumn 2020, Earth Blox won a rare double victory in Scotland’s most prestigious enterprise awards, taking the biggest prize in Converge Challenge and a win at Scottish Edge. These awards helped raise the profile of Earth Blox in Scotland, which continues to grow from five employees in 2021 to 11 employees in 2022.

Converge Challenge

Converge helps students, graduates and staff across Scotland’s universities and research institutes turn their creativity, ideas and innovations into commercial reality. Working in collaboration with Scotland’s universities, we uncover emerging spinouts and startups, acting as a catalyst to accelerate the creation of innovative products and services that will improve lives and safeguard our planet. The programme springboards new businesses through intensive business training, networking, 1-2-1 support, generous equity-free cash prizes and expert, professional advice from a roster of industry partners.

The challenge has four challenge categories tailored to developing business across all sectors and stages of development:

Challenge	Converge Challenge	Net Zero Challenge	Create Change Challenge	Kickstart Challenge
Remit	For all sectors and enterprise types, open to high-calibre, innovative projects with serious growth potential.	Supporting Scotland’s efforts in becoming a carbon neutral nation by 2045, this challenge welcomes clean-tech & environmental projects that can deliver maximum impact for Scotland’s net zero goal.	For creative and social projects looks to change the world for the better.	A first step towards commercialisation for early-stage business ideas. It’s designed to test the robustness of your idea, equip you for the realities of entrepreneurship and prepare you for the more advanced challenge categories.
Company Stage	Award must be paid into a company account. Expected to go to market within 12 months of award.	Pre-startup/spinout, award can be paid into a personal account.
Top prize	£50,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £20,000	£30,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £18,000	£30,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £10,000	£10,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £18,000
Runner up prizes	£20,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £9,000	£10,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £9,000	2 x £10,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £3,000	2 x £7,500
Special prizes for creativity and entrepreneurial spirit	---	---	---	£5,000 x 2
CENSIS special prize	---	---	---	£5,000 plus additional in-kind support
IBioIC special prize	Awarded to a project from any category, £20,000 to host-university, plus additional in-kind support
Cosco Future Tech Award	Awarded to a project from any category, £10,000 plus mentoring
RBS Rose Award	Awarded to a project from any category led by a female entrepreneur, £10,000 plus mentoring

In the last 12 years Converge has trained 600+ entrepreneurs, recreated 330+ companies, and created 1000+ jobs. Converge participants have raised £320m+ in follow-on funding.

Who can apply?

Staff, students and recent graduates of Scottish Higher Education Institutes (HEIs)

Company income cannot exceed more than £150k.

Company must have been incorporated in the last 24 months .

There is an expectation to commercialise within 12 months (subject to sector appropriateness).

Business must be registered in Scotland (or plan to be).

Timelines

Converge runs on an annual basis, with the application deadline typically falling in March. Semi-finalists are invited to participate in training in June, with a further deadline to submit a final business case and video in August. Finalists are shortlisted in September, and the cycle concludes with an awards ceremony in October.

I’m interested! What now?

For more details visit the Converge Challenge webpage and contact a member of the staff enterprise team to find out more. We encourage you to contact us at the earliest opportunity.

Scottish EDGE

Scottish EDGE is a competition aimed at identifying and supporting Scotland’s up-and-coming, innovative, high-growth entrepreneurial talent. The competition is delivered twice per year, typically opening in January & July, with awards ceremonies in May and November.

The competition typically features the following categories:

Category	Scottish EDGE	Social Enterprise EDGE	Young EDGE
Remit and basic eligibility	The main competition category to which all applicants apply. For innovative, high growth-potential businesses in all sectors.	For organisations that clearly demonstrate how their business enriches communities and makes a contribution to society, tackling social and environmental problems in Scotland, nationally or abroad, whilst being built on the back of strong business foundations which outline a sustainable business growth plan. Open to asset-locked Social Enterprises and Charities only.	Supports companies whose Directors are all aged 18-30 (excluding Non-Exec Directors and Investors).
Top prize	Multiple winners of £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan), plus enrolment in to the EDGE Alumni programme, support from leading business organisations, and dedicated relationship management to help your business grow.	£75,000 (70% grant, 30% loan)	£15,000 (100% grant)
Runners Up	---	---	6 x £10,000 (100% grant)
Special accolade awards	Net Zero EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan) celebrating the role that innovative business people and entrepreneurs play in making Scotland’s drive to be net zero by 2045 achievable.	---	---
STV Growth EDGE: £75,000 worth of STV advertising for the winning consumer-based product business.
IBioIC EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan), plus membership of IBioIC & mentoring, for the top Industrial Biotechnology Sector business.
Circular Economy EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan) for the top Circular business idea.
Creative EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan) for businesses operating in one of the creative sector sub-sectors.

All applications are assessed for their value proposition, team, impact, customer focus, business growth and utilisation of funding.

For more details visit the Scottish EDGE webpage and please contact a member of the staff enterprise team to find out more. We encourage you to contact us at the earliest opportunity.

This article was published on 2024-07-01

Innovation & Enterprise

Competitions for startup funding

Develop your skills, test your ideas and access funding and support through competitions for entrepreneurs and startups.

Most startup programmes are run as monthly or annual competitions. They include opportunities to meet your peers, learn from industry experts and refine your ideas, as well as win cash prizes and investment.

Develop your network and skills

Explore and test your business idea.

Get the backing for a market-ready or trading business

Learn how to set up a startup

The Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (YES) is a three-day training programme designed to develop business skills in postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers. It offers workshops for all academic disciplines, with input from leading industry figures. Take part and you’ll work in a small team developing a business plan for a hypothetical but plausible idea. Visit the YES site to find out more.

Explore your entrepreneurial idea

Test the potential of your business idea with our 6-week Explore programme . You’ll work alongside other entrepreneurs to sharpen your skills, stress test your ideas and establish a market for your business or social enterprise. You'll also have the chance to win a share of £3,000 to help develop your business further.

Build your business or social enterprise

Our 6-week Build programme will help you take the next practical steps to develop your business or social enterprise. You'll also have the chance to win £3,000 to help develop your business further.

A chance to win $1 million in funding

The Hult Prize has been called the Nobel Prize for students. Each year 50,000 students from all over the world compete for the chance to win $1 million in seed funding to launch their social enterprise. Visit the Hult Prize Foundation website to find out more.

For ideas that make London a better place to live and work

If you have an idea for improving London you could win £20,000 and support from City Hall. The Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition is open to students and recent graduates from London’s universities and colleges entering as individuals or in teams. Visit the Mayor’s competition site to find out more.

Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards

Santander works with universities to give early stage student and graduate ventures a boost, with cash prizes, mentoring and business support. It holds entrepreneurship awards annually, with a new theme each year. Look out for the next competition dates in promotions around the university and apply through our Entrepreneurship team at BaseKX.

For new ideas in the care sector

At this hackathon-style weekend in London, teams of students take on some of the biggest challenges facing the care sector. You can apply from any faculty or discipline, ideally in a team of two or three. Twelve teams pitch their ideas to a panel of industry experts, with five projects going through to the final and a chance to win funding, co-working space and mentorship. Visit the Care Innovation Hub site to find out more.

For innovative technologies in chemistry

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies competition speeds up the development of new ideas in enabling technologies, energy, the environment, and health. Winners receive funding to progress their idea, along with support and publicity. Visit the Royal Society’s site to find out more.

For ideas that tackle the global waste challenge

The Green Alley Award is open to European startups with ideas for recycling, waste prevention or digital circular economy solutions. You could win €25,000 and access to mentoring, networking and learning opportunities. Visit the Green Alley Award site to find out more.

The London Healthtech Challenge

The HealthTech Challenge is a business idea competition which awards £10,000, along with mentorship and networking opportunities, to a health tech idea that will improving healthcare outcomes. Shortlisted teams have the chance to refine their idea and pitch with the input of industry professionals. It’s open to teams with at least one graduate, postgraduate or doctoral student, or researcher affiliated to an academic institution. Visit the Healthtech Challenge site to find out more.

Global competition for clean technology ideas

The Clean Tech Challenge is open to students at all levels: undergraduates, postgraduates and doctoral students. If your idea is accepted, you’ll compete in teams over three rounds for a £20,000 prize and mentoring from industry experts. The event is organised by London Business School and UCL and attracts applications from around the world. Visit the Clean Tech Challenge site to find out more.

Support for ventures that improve wellbeing

The global IMAGINE IF! accelerator programme is for startups in life sciences and health tech which are aiming to improve human or animal healthcare and wellbeing. It provides a cash prize, lab space, mentorships, free advice from professional services companies and networking opportunities. Visit the Innovation Forum site to find out more.

For innovations addressing social issues

The Stephen Lloyd Awards are open to early stage projects that could bring about practical, sustainable social change. Ten shortlisted applicants will receive up to £2,500, along with expert support to help them further develop their ideas. The winner will be awarded up to £25,000. Visit the Stephen Lloyd Awards site to find out more.

NACUE’s Varsity Pitch Competition

This three-stage competition includes an online public vote, a boot camp with mentors and a grand final. Through the pitch process you’ll get your business noticed and have the chance to win £15,000 equity-free cash and marketing opportunities. It’s open to students and recent graduates who are running a business or have an idea they want to develop. Visit the NACUE site to find out more.

Support for a market-ready or trading business

Seed funding for startups.

The Start-Up Series is a monthly seed funding competition. It awards one business up to £250,000 of equity funding, support from an experienced director and media coverage across startups.co.uk. To apply, your startup will need to be based in the UK and have been trading for two years or less. Visit the Start-Up Series site to find out more.

Global competition for student startups

The Rice Business Plan Competition is open to graduate startups anywhere in the world. It’s designed to help you fine tune your business plan and elevator pitch. In addition to competing for up to a $200,000 investment, competitors also have access to mentoring, networking, personalised feedback. Find out more on the Rice University website .

Leeds Business Plan Competition 2024... £2000 prize!

What's happening?

Do you have an amazing business idea you would like to make into reality?

Leeds University students are invited to enter the 2024 Business Plan Competition, with the chance to win the first prize of £2000!

How to apply?

Follow these simple steps:

download the application form
complete the form and return directly to Spark at [email protected]

What is the competition timeline?

• Announcement of Finalists: Tuesday 20th Feb 2024 • Finalists presentations: Tuesday 27th February and Friday 01st March 2024 • Winners announcement: Monday 04th March 2024 • Business Plan Lunch: Wednesday 13th March 2024

What are the full prizes?

First Prize: £2,000
Second Prize: £1,250
Third Prize: £750

Further information

If you have further questions or would like to read about the entries and winners from last year, please visit the Spark Business Competition 2024 webpage

The 20 Best Business Plan Competitions to Get Funding

Business plan competitions can provide valuable feedback on your business idea or startup business plan template , in addition to providing an opportunity for funding for your business. This article will discuss what business planning competitions are, how to find them, and list the 20 most important business planning competitions.

On This Page:

What is a Business Plan Competition?

How do i find business plan competitions, 20 popular business plan competitions, tips for winning business plan competitions, other helpful business plan articles & templates.

A business plan competition is a contest between startup, early-stage, and/or growing businesses. The goal of the business plan competition is for participants to develop and submit an original idea or complete their existing business plan based on specific guidelines provided by the organization running the contest.

Companies are judged according to set criteria including creativity, feasibility, execution, and the quality of your business plan.

A quick Google search will lead you to several websites that list business planning competitions.

Each site has a different way of organizing the business planning competitions it lists, so you’ll need to spend some time looking through each website to find opportunities that are relevant for your type of business or industry.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

Below we’ve highlighted 20 of these popular competitions, the requirements and how to find additional information. The following list is not exhaustive; however, these popular competitions are great places to start if you’re looking for a business competition.

Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice University Business Plan Competition is designed to help collegiate entrepreneurs by offering a real-world platform on which to present their businesses to investors, receive coaching, network with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, fine-tune their entrepreneurship plan, and learn what it takes to launch a successful business.

Who is Eligible?

Initial eligibility requirements include teams and/or entrepreneurs that:

are student-driven, student-created and/or student-managed
include at least two current student founders or management team members, and at least one is a current graduate degree-seeking student
are from a college or university anywhere in the world
have not raised more than $250,000 in equity capital
have not generated revenue of more than $100,000 in any 12-month period
are seeking funding or capital
have a potentially viable investment opportunity

You can find additional eligibility information on their website.

Where is the Competition Held?

The Rice Business Plan Competition is hosted in Houston, TX at Rice University, the Jones Graduate School of Business.

What Can You Win?

In 2021, $1.6 Million in investment, cash prizes, and in-kind prizes was awarded to the teams competing.

This two-part milestone grant funding program and pitch competition is designed to assist students with measurable goals in launching their enterprises.

Teams must be made up of at least one student from an institution of higher education in Utah and fulfill all of the following requirements:

The founding student must be registered for a minimum of nine (9) credit hours during the semester they are participating. The credit hours must be taken as a matriculated, admitted, and degree-seeking student.
A representative from your team must engage in each stage of Get Seeded (application process, pre-pitch, and final pitch)
There are no restrictions regarding other team members; however, we suggest building a balanced team with a strong combination of finance, marketing, engineering, and technology skills.
The funds awarded must be used to advance the idea.

The business plan competition will be hosted in Salt Lake City, UT at the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah.

There are two grants opportunities:

Microgrant up to $500
Seed Grant for $501 – $1,500

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards is a worldwide business plan competition for students from all majors. The GSEA aims to empower talented young people from around the world, inspire them to create and shape business ventures, encourage entrepreneurship in higher education, and support the next generation of global leaders.

You must be enrolled for the current academic year in a university/college as an undergraduate or graduate student at the time of application. Full-time enrollment is not required; part-time enrollment is acceptable.
You must be the owner, founder, or controlling shareholder of your student business. Each company can be represented by only one owner/co-founder – studentpreneur.
Your student business must have been in operation for at least six consecutive months prior to the application.
Your business must have generated US $500 or received US $1000 in investments at the time of application.
You should not have been one of the final round competitors from any previous year’s competition.
The age cap for participation is 30 years of age.

You can find additional eligibility information on their website.

Regional competitions are held in various locations worldwide over several months throughout the school year. The top four teams then compete for cash prizes during finals week at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City.

At the Global Finals, students compete for a total prize package of $50,000 in cash and first place receives $25,000. All travel and lodging expenses are also covered. Second place gets US $10,000, while third place earns US $5,000. Additional prizes are handed out at the Global Finals for Social Impact, Innovation, and Lessons from the Edge.

Finish Your Business Plan in 1 Day!

The collegiate entrepreneurs organization business plan competition.

The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization Business Plan Competition (COEBPC) exists to help early-stage entrepreneurs develop their business skills, build entrepreneurial networks, and learn more about how they can transform ideas into reality. It also offers cash prizes to reward entrepreneurship, provide an opportunity for recognition of top student entrepreneurs around the world, and provide unique opportunities for networking.

To compete, you must:

Be a currently enrolled student at an accredited institution
Have a viable business concept or be the creator of an existing business that generates revenue.

If you are among the top three finalists of the business plan competition and successfully receive prize money, you will be required to submit a class schedule under your name for the current academic semester. Failure to do so will result in the forfeit of the prize money.

All competitions are held online. The finalist will receive a trip to the International Career Development Conference, where they have an opportunity to win additional prizes from CEO’s sponsors.

First Place – $7,000
Second Place – $5,000
Third Place – $3,000
People’s Choice Award – Collegiate Entrepreneur of the Year – $600

MIT 100k Business Plan Competition and Expo

The MIT 100K was created in 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to foster entrepreneurship and innovation on campus and around the world. Consists of three distinct and increasingly intensive competitions throughout the school year: PITCH, ACCELERATE, and LAUNCH.

Submissions may be entered by individuals or teams.
Each team may enter one idea.
Each team must have at least one currently registered MIT student; if you are submitting as an individual, you must be a currently registered MIT student.
Entries must be the original work of entrants.
Teams must disclose any funding already received at the time of registration.

Hosted in Cambridge, MA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in October through May of each academic year.

Top finalists will have a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges at a live event for the chance to win the $5,000 Grand Prize or the $2,000 Audience Choice Award.

20 Finalists are paired with industry-specific business professionals for mentorship and business planning and a $1,000 budget for marketing and/or business development expenses.

The 10 Top Finalists participate in the Showcase and compete for the $10,000 Audience Choice Award while the 3 Top Finalists automatically advance to LAUNCH semi-finals.

The grand prize winner receives a cash prize of $100,000 and the runner-up receives $25,000.

Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Business Plan Competition

The FAU business plan competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate student entrepreneurs. The competition covers topics in the areas of information technology, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, etc.

All undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to participate.

The business plan competition will be held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

First prize: $5,000 cash
Second prize: $500 cash

Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition

The Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition is designed to offer an opportunity to develop your business plan with the guidance of industry experts. It provides the opportunity for you to compete against fellow entrepreneurs and explore big ideas.

Participants must be the legal age to enter into contracts in the country of residence.
Participants may not be employed by an organization other than their own company or business that they are launching for this competition.
The plan should be for a new business, not an acquisition of another company.

The Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition is held in the USA.

There is a cash prize for first, second, and third place. There is also a potential for a business incubator opportunity, which would provide facilities and assistance to the winners of the competition.

Washington State University Business Plan Competition

The Washington State University Business Plan Competition has been serving students since 1979. The competition is a great opportunity for someone who is looking to get their business off the ground by gaining invaluable knowledge of running a successful business. It offers a wide range of topics and competition styles.

Any college undergraduate, graduate, or professional degree-seeking student at Washington State University
The company must be an early-stage venture with less than $250,000 in annual gross sales revenue.

The Washington State University Business Plan Competition is held in the Associated Students Inc. Building on the Washington State University campus which is located in Pullman, Washington.

There are a wide variety of prizes that could be won at the Washington State University Business Plan Competition. This is because the business plan competition has been serving students for over 30 years and as such, they have offered more than one type of competition. The common prize though is $1,000 which is awarded to the winner of each class. There are also awards for those who come in second place, third place, etc.

Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition is one of the most well-known competitions in the country. They have partnered with many prestigious institutions to provide funding, mentorship, and expertise for the competition.

Education ventures with innovative solutions to educational inequity from around the world are encouraged to apply, especially those ventures founded by and serving individuals from marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.

We encourage applicants working in every conceivable educational setting–from early childhood through corporate and adult training. We also welcome both nonprofit and for-profit submissions.

The competition is held at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

All finalists receive $1,000 in cash and $5,000 in Amazon Web Services promotional credits.

Next Founders Business Plan Competition

Next Founders is a competition geared towards innovative startups with a social impact, looking to transform society by addressing key global human needs. The competition inspires and identifies energetic, optimistic entrepreneurs who are committed to achieving their vision.

Next Founders is for Canadian business owners of scalable, high-growth ventures.

Next Founders is held at the University of Toronto.

You could win up to $25,000 CAD in cash funding for your new business.

Hatch Pitch Competition

The Hatch Pitch competition is one of the most prestigious business competitions in the US. The winners of the Hatch Pitch Competition are given access to mentorship courses, discounted office space with all amenities included, incubators for startups, tailored education programs, financial counseling & more.

The competition is for companies with a business idea.

The company’s product/service must have launched within the past 2 years, or be launched within 6 months after the Hatch Pitch event.
Founders must retain some portion of ownership in the company.
Received less than $5 million in funding from 3rd party investors.
The presenter must actively participate in Hatch Pitch coaching.

The Hatch Pitch Competition is located at the Entrepreneur Space in Dallas.

The grand prize for this business plan competition is access to resources like incubators and mentorships that could prove invaluable in bringing your startup company to the next level.

TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield

The Startup Battlefield is a business plan competition that is sponsored by TechCrunch. It awards the winner $50,000. There are two different rounds to this competition:

First Round – 15 companies from all of the applicants that submitted their business plans for this round.
Second Round – Two finalist companies compete against each other at TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s main stage.

At the time of the application process, companies must have a functional prototype to demo to the selection committee. In selecting final contestants, we will give preference to companies that launch some part of their product or business for the first time to the public and press through our competition. Companies that are in closed beta, private beta, limited release or generally have been flying under the radar are eligible. Hardware companies can have completed crowdfunding but those funds should have been directed to an earlier product prototype. Existing companies launching new feature sets do not qualify.

TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield is held at different locations.

The Startup Battlefield rewards the winner with $50,000. In addition, the two runner-ups get a prize of $5,000 each.

New Venture Challenge

New Venture Challenge is a competition hosted by the University of Chicago. There are 3 main categories that will be judged:

Innovative Concept – Arguably the most important category, this focuses on uniqueness, originality, and suitability.
Market Fit/Business Model – Are you solving an actual problem for your target market? Does your project have the potential for profit?
Presentation – Did you make a compelling, impactful presentation? Did you clearly communicate your goals and vision to potential investors?

You can find eligibility information on their website.

The New Venture Challenge competition is held in Chicago, IL.

Finalists are awarded:

First Place: $50,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.
Second place: $25,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.
Third place: $15,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.

New Venture Championship

The New Venture Championship is hosted by the University of Oregon and has been since 1987. The championship brings new ventures and innovative business ideas to life and the competition offers plan writing as a service to those who need it.

The University of Oregon New Venture Championship is open to university student teams with 2-5 members that have at least one graduate student involved with their venture. Students should be enrolled in a degree program or have finished their studies in the current academic year.

The New Venture Championship hosted by the University of Oregon is held in Eugene, Oregon.

Every business plan has a chance of winning a cash prize from $3,000 to $25,000 and additional benefits like plan coaching and office space rental.

Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT

The Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT is a competition that focuses on companies that are involved in the area of energy, environment, and climate change.

Participants must be a team of two or more people.
At least 50% of formal team members identified in the competition submission documentation must be enrolled as half-time or full-time college or university students.

The Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT is held in Cambridge, MA.

The grand prize winner receives $100,000 and other winners may receive other monetary prizes.

Baylor Business New Venture Competition

This competition has been offered by Baylor for the last 20 years. It is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs refine business ideas, and also gain valuable insights from judges and other entrepreneurs.

Must be a current undergraduate student at Baylor University or McLennan Community College.

The Baylor Business New Venture competition will be held at the Baylor University, Waco, TX.

The grand prize winner will receive $6,000. There are also other prizes given out to the other finalists in each category which are worth $1,500 – $2,000.

13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup

The 13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup was organized by the 13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup Association. It was organized to provide a platform for innovators from all over the world to showcase their innovative ideas and projects. The competition aimed at drawing the attention of investors, venture capitalists, and potential business partners to meet with representatives from different companies and organizations in order to foster innovation.

The revolutionary Internet of Things and Wearable Technologies solutions from developers, innovative startups, scale-ups, SMEs, and researchers across the world are invited to participate. Eight different categories are available: Industrial, City, Home, Agriculture, Sports, Lifestyle, and Transport.

Only those submissions that have a functional prototype/proof of concept will advance in the competition, mere ideas will not be considered.

The competition is held in Cleveland, Ohio also an important center for innovation and cutting-edge technology.

Win prizes worth over $500,000, connect with leading tech companies, speed up your development with advice from tech experts, join international conferences as a speaker or exhibitor, and become part of the worldwide IoT/WT Innovation World Cup® network.

The U.Pitch is a competition that gives you a chance to share your idea and for the community of budding entrepreneurs, startup founders, CEOs, and venture capitalists to invest in your enterprise. It also provides mentoring by experts in the field.

Currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program
Applicants may compete with either an idea OR business currently in operation
Applicants must be 30 years of age or under

The U.Pitch is held in San Francisco, California.

Enter to win a part of the $10,000 prize pool.

At the core of CodeLaunch is an annual seed accelerator competition between individuals and groups who have software technology startup ideas.

If your startup has raised money, your product is stable, you have customers, and revenue, you are probably not a fit for CodeLaunch.

CodeLaunch is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

The “winner” may be eligible for more seed capital and business services from some additional vendors.

New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition

The New York StartUP! is a competition sponsored by the New York Public Library to help entrepreneurs from around the world to develop their business ideas.

You must live in Manhattan, The Bronx, or Staten Island
Your business must be in Manhattan, The Bronx, or Staten Island
All companies must have a big idea or business model in the startup phase and have earned less than $10,000

The New York StartUP! competition is held in New York, NY.

Two winners are chosen:

Grand Prize – $15,000
Runner-up – $7,500

First, determine if the competition is worth your time and money to participate.

What is the prize money?
Who will be on the judging panel?
Will there be any costs associated with entering and/or presenting at the competition (e.g., travel and lodging expenses)?

Once you’ve determined the worth of the competition, then shift to focusing on the details of the competition itself.

What are the rules of the competition?
Are there any disqualifying factors?
How will you be judged during the different parts of the competition?

After conducting this research, it’s best to formulate an idea or product that appeals to the judges and is something they can really get behind. Make sure you thoroughly understand the rules and what is expected from your final product. Once you know what is expected from you, you’ll be able to refine and practice your pitch to help you move through the stages of the competition.

These competitions are a fantastic method to get new business owners thinking about business possibilities, writing business plans, and dominating the competition. These contests may assist you in gaining important feedback on your business concept or plan as well as potential monetary prizes to help your business get off the ground.

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SPARK business competitions

Spark business plan competition – applications have now closed for this year, register your interest to find out about this competition and other spark events. .

Click here to register with Spark

Business Plan Competition to launch January 2025

Do you have a business idea? Have you already started a business and want to take it to the next level?

If you are a University of Leeds student, or someone who has graduated from the University of Leeds in the last seven years, then you could enter the University of Leeds Business Plan Competition 2025.

First Prize: £2,000 Second Prize: £1,250 Third Prize: £750

(Prizes available at both levels, pre-start and trading up to 24 months)

For more information contact Angela Archer:

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0113 343 2551 (Mon-Fri 9.00am - 4.00pm)

Organised by Spark, the University’s business start-up team, the prestigious Business Plan Competition is open to both undergraduates and alumni who graduated up to 7 years ago.

This annual competition awards prizes in two main categories: Pre-trading and Trading up to 24 months, with the winners of each receive a prize of £2,000. Altogether, the total of prizes awarded this year approaches £10,000.

“We are always incredibly impressed by the high calibre of entries we receive from our enterprising students and graduates. The brilliant business plans we judged this year were from individuals across all faculties, leading to a diverse mix of applications, and this competition allows us to shine a spotlight on their talent, innovation and creativity”

Business Plan Competition Winners 2024

In the Trading category, Economics graduate Zhenyu Li won the £2k first prize for a business allied to his already successful company AutoSqueak, a leading supplier of car cleaning products which turned over some £800k in 2023. With deep knowledge of his sector, Zhenyu is taking on major players such as Eurocar Parts and Halfords by launching an e-commerce platform where individual motorists and automotive repair shops can directly source ‘automotive aftermarket’ products and parts. The platform will also use artificial intelligence to help users source exactly the right product, matched to the vehicle’s make and model.

“My platform will deliver a cost-effective and technologically advanced online marketplace that connects UK car owners and repair shops with a global supply network.”

Winner in the Pre-Trading category was Tom Milner, a final year Electronics and Computer Engineering student. Tom already holds an Enterprise Scholarship for a separate digital music streaming venture, but his latest winning idea is an innovative 3-D printed bracket to wall-mount houseplants without screws or permanent fixings. The Klip product solves the problem faced by students and others in the rental market who aren’t allowed to make alterations to their accommodation. It’s also a great solution for anyone not great at DIY!

“Having this recognition from the experts on the judging panel is a fantastic boost and the £2k prize money will be really helpful to do more product testing to improve the design and experiment with colours and branding ahead of launching Klip hopefully later this year.”

Two £1000 ‘special recognition’ prizes were awarded by Nick Howard of Limehouse – himself a former Business Plan Competition winner. Nick chose Alex Neish’s outdoor clothing company Chameleon Concealment which makes photo-realistic camouflage for players of airsoft, a paintball-style team game; and secondly, Jay Brown’s company JBS Sourcing, a distributor of popular branded products that uses Amazon’s fulfilment services to streamline sales, returns and customer service.

Speaking at the Awards lunch in March held in University House, Kairen Skelley, Head of Business Start-up at Spark said: “This was another year of superb business plans. It’s such an honour to work with such talented and insightful entrepreneurs.”

The full list of winners: Trading category

1 st prize - £2000: Zhenyu Li , AutoSqueak Ltd 2 nd prize - £1250: Trib Gosain (International Business and Marketing, 2020) and business partner Reid Jacoby for Gilley, an innovative new umbrella design joint 3 rd prize - £750 each: Jay Brown (Y4, Business Management), JSB Sourcing Ltd; and Sarah Jane Clayton (Y3 Midwifery) for Breathe and Birth, providing hypnobirthing and birth education classes Limehouse special recognition award - £1000 : Jay Brown, JSB Sourcing Ltd

The full list of winners: Pre-trading category 1 st prize - £2000: Tom Milner for the Klip wall-mounted houseplant bracket 2 nd prize - £1250: Iona Elborough-Whitehouse (current MSc Management Consulting) and business partner Claire Sutton for Swimsets - waterproof resources for swimmers and swim teachers to use at the poolside Joint 3 rd prize - £750 each: Alex Neish (Y3 Fine Art with History of Art) , Chameleon Concealment; and Dr Joshua Nivern (BSC Medicine 2016) for ToothPik, a patient-facing dentalcare comparison website Limehouse special recognition award - £1000: Alex Neish , Chameleon Concealment

Competition News

Sir Peter Thompson Award ensures a brighter future for innovative umbrella brand

The 2024 Sir Peter Thompson Award, supported by Michael Collins of Goldcrest Custom Homes Ltd – the University’s most prestigious award for entrepreneurship - has been won by International Business and Marketing graduate Trib Gosain and his business partner Reid Jacoby for their business, Gilley Ltd .

Trib and Reid’s bold ambition is to both create the best umbrella in the world and build the next iconic British brand.

“Our aim is to elevate a purely functional product into something that is aesthetically elegant, synonymous with high end quality and something that people aspire to own because of the essence and heritage of the brand itself – like Hunter wellington boots,” says Trib.

The Gilley umbrella is windproof, with a reinforced structure so it won’t blow inside out. It also has a unique feature that makes losing your umbrella almost impossible – and a lightweight but sturdy case that doubles as a handle. This means that a wet umbrella can be safely stored in its watertight case, rather than being put aside to dry and easily forgotten.

Gilley started trading at the end of 2023 and has already seen sales of over £150,000. The launch follows a month-long campaign on the fundraising platform Kickstarter, which raised their target finance within ten minutes of going live. This catapulted Gilley into the top 2% of Kickstarter campaigns of all time, and made the founders realise that their instincts were right and that they were onto something big!

“I graduated in 2020 and hadn’t realised that the University supports entrepreneurs up to seven years after graduation like this,” says Trib. “By complete chance I was still subscribed to Spark emails and came across one about the Business Plan Competition, so we entered and came second, which was fantastic. And now the Sir Peter Thompson Award – winning this is such an honour! The £5K prize is wonderful timing as we’re currently fundraising again so that we can make further refinements to the Gilley design. Although we are now based in London, it is great to know we have Spark advisors offering their expertise and fresh perspectives to draw on.”

Kairen Skelley, Head of Business Start-up at Spark, which runs the award, said: “ Gilley has it all – this is clearly a very high-quality product already, with huge market potential, and Trib and Reid demonstrated clear future growth plans with a great handle on the financial aspects of the business. The judges were all extremely impressed by the ambition to re-imagine and elevate a humble, everyday product into a contemporary aspirational brand.”

Working from offices near London Bridge, Trib and Reid are delighted when friends and colleagues tell them they spotted a Gilley being used. “Ironically, we have yet to see one ourselves ‘in the wild’ as we call it, but I know we’ll be so excited when we do. Reid and I may be the only people in the UK that check the weather forecasts and hope for rain!”

Watch this space for future competitions

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The Best 20 Business Plan Competitions to Get Funding in (2024)

Free Business Plan Template

Radhika Agarwal

October 18, 2023

11 Min Read

Brilliant business ideas deserve 2 things for sure – Feedback and Funding.

And if you think you have a good business idea and have some bit of groundwork figured out, you may want to look into business plan competitions.

Now, what is a business plan competition? Why should you participate in one? How to find one that’s just right for your business?

We’ll discuss all of the above and more through this article.

What is a Business Plan Competition?

A business plan competition is an event that allows small businesses and startups to compete with each other, get feedback and advice on their business, and also can help you get your business funded.

Businesses are judged on several factors including execution, feasibility, innovation, etc.

How to Find a Business Plan Competition?

There are several business plan competitions listed on Google that you can look through. Different competitions have different eligibility criteria and guidelines. Go through all of that to know if it fits your business or not.

At the same time, it is important to check the credibility and check for any scams or illegitimate sites.

To make finding business plan competitions a little easier we have compiled a list of 20 popular and credible competitions that you can apply for.

Business Plan Competitions

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards
tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition
HATCH Pitch
Rice Business Plan Competition
New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition
MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo
FAU Business Plan Competition
NIBS Business Plan Competition
Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge
College of New Jersey’s Mayo Business Plan Competition
Next Founders Business Plan Competition
TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield
New Venture Challenge
New Venture Championship
Climatech & Energy Prize @MIT
Baylor Business New Venture Competition
13th IOT/WT World Cup

1. Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

To encourage students across the globe to become entrepreneurs GSEA organizes this competition for students from all disciplines and countries. The main aim of the awards is to draw people towards entrepreneurship, shape their ideas, and become a catalyst for their business’s growth.

Eligibility

The student must enroll in a part-time or full-time undergraduate or graduate course.

The student should own or work as a founder or co-founder of the startup.

Only one person from the startup can represent it.

The person should either be 30 or under 30 years of age.

The startup should be running for at least 6 months from the date of application.

The startup should either generate $500 or get $1000 as investments at the time of application.

The startup shouldn’t have reached the final round of the competition in previous years.

For more details check out their website.

The competition is held at several locations across the world over months during a school year. The finals among the Top 4 teams are held at Goldman Sachs New York.

First Prize: $25,000
Second Prize: $10,000
Third Prize: $5,000

Lodging and travel expenses are covered and additional prizes are handed out at the event.

2. tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition

The tecBRIDGE competition is divided into two parts, with one for college students across 14 colleges and universities and a non-collegiate one for early-stage entrepreneurs.

( For Collegiate )

At least one member as a college student

The product must identify commercial solutions through technical processes.

( For Non-Collegiate )

The startup must gross less than $250k in revenue from its start date up to the last tax filing date.

It is held in Northeastern Pennsylvania every year. The businesses that win have to establish their headquarters there as well.

Prizes worth $100,000 are shared amongst the winning teams.

3. HATCH Pitch

Through the Hatch Pitch program, you get access to mentorship courses, discounted spaces, funds, education programs, financial consulting, and so on.

The product/ Service was launched within 2 years.

Founders should retain some part of the ownership.

Must actively participate actively in Hatch Pitch coaching.

Must receive less than $5 million in funds from third-party investors.

The competition is held at Entrepreneur space in Dallas.

Access to high-level incubators and mentorship.

4. Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice University business plan competition is specially designed for college students to present their ideas to investors , get mentorship and help shape their ideas and business journey better.

Students managed or created businesses.

Consists of at least 2 college students, and one student pursuing a graduate degree.

Have raised less than $250k in equity capital.

Have generated less than $100k in any 12-month period.

Houston at Rice University, graduate school of business, hosts this event.

In 2021, the winners were awarded investments worth $1.6 Million , cash prizes, etc.

5. New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition

New York Public library sponsors this competition to help entrepreneurs from around the world. They give wings to their ideas.

Must live in Manhattan, Staten Island, or The Bronx.

Your business should be in any of the above places as well.

The idea or business model is in the startup phase and shouldn’t have earned more than $10,000.

The competition is held in New York.

A grand prize worth $15000 and a Runner Up prize worth $7500 .

6. MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo

MIT organizes this competition to promote innovation in the university as well as the world. It consists of 3 competitions throughout the year namely Pitch, Accelerate, and Launch.

Each team should enter one idea.

Participants must have original work ideas

Should disclose the received funding.

Hosted in Cambridge MA MIT campus from October to May through the academic year.

Pitch: $5000 jury award and $2000 audience choice award.
Accelerate: 20 finalists get industry-specific mentorship programs with a budget of $1000 each. The top 10 finalists compete for the Audience Choice award worth $10,000. The top 3 finalists immediately get into the finals of the launch.
Launch: The winner gets a whopping amount of $100,000 while the runner gets $25000 .

Official Website MIT 100k

7. FAU Business Plan Competition

The Florida Atlantic University Business Plan Competition is for graduate and undergraduate students spanning all continents.

Undergraduate or graduate participants.

The competition is held at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, Florida.

First Prize: $5000 and Second Prize: $500

8. NIBS Business Plan Competition

The NIBS competition helps you discuss and give a boost to your ideas. It also helps you get industry experts guidance.

Entrants of legal age to have contracts as per the rules of their country of residence.

Should not hold any employment apart from their own company.

The plan must stand for a startup business and not an acquisition.

It is held in the USA.

There’s a cash prize for the first three places as well as an opportunity to get an incubator program for the winners.

9. Get Seeded

Get Seed is a two-part funding program for students in launching their businesses.

At least one student from a higher education institution in Utah is a must.

Should be enrolled for nine credit hours during that semester.

Utilization of funds to take the idea further.

Salt Lake City in Utah hosts the business plan competition.

A micro-grant worth $500 and a seeded grant from $501 to $1500

10. Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge

This competition was designed for startups focusing on digital and health technology.

Legally formed entities

The company must have less than 50 people.

Annual sales under $5 million.

The product should have been launched within 3 years.

Your country should not have USA’s trade restrictions imposed.

You can submit your ideas from anywhere.

Five finalists win $5000 and 2 winners receive $20,000 .

Official Website

11. College of New Jersey’s Mayo Business Plan Competition

This competition is held for students to appreciate new challenges.

The teams must consist of two and bot more than four students from the College of New Jersey.

The College of New Jersey hosts this event.

The winners get mentorship and guidance programs.

Check Official Website

12. Next Founders Business Plan Competition

This competition focuses on startups with an innovative approach to solving social problems and global needs.

It is for Canadian entrepreneurs with scalable, high-potential ventures.

The University of Toronto.

Up to 25,000 CAD$ in cash for funding your startup.

13. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield

TechCrunch sponsors this competition which comprises two levels.

The companies must have a functional prototype of their product or service to present to the committee.

Different locations.

The winner gets $50,000 and two runner-ups get $5000 each.

Check Competition Website

14. New Venture Challenge

This competition is held at the University of Chicago. Three evaluation points for participants are – Innovation, Product Market Fit , and presentation.

The eligibility information is available on their website.

Chicago, IL.

1st Place: $50,000 ; 2nd Place: $25,000 ; 3rd Place: $15,000 . In addition to that, the winners get access to mentorship and resources.

15. New Venture Championship

This competition is for those with a good business idea. Even if you don’t have a business plan, you can participate as the competition provides optional plan writing services.

The team should have 2-5 members.

Should have at least one graduate student.

The students should be pursuing their undergraduate or graduate degrees.

Eugene, Oregon.

Teams have a chance to win cash prizes ranging from $3000 to $25,000 with additional benefits like mentorship and rented office spaces.

16. Climatech & Energy Prize @MIT

This competition is ideal for companies with a core focus on energy, climate change, and the environment.

The team must have more than 2 members.

At least 50% of part-time or full-time university students.

Cambridge, MA hosts this competition

The winner gets a sizable sum of $1,00,000 .

17. U.Pitch

This competition gives entrants a chance to present their ideas to people from different levels and spectrums in the business space and get an opportunity for investments and mentorship programs.

Undergraduate or graduate program students.

Functioning Business

Age up to or below 30

San Francisco, California hosts this competition.

Prizes worth $10,000 are given.

18. CodeLaunch

It is a seed accelerator competition for entrepreneurs who have technology startups.

The detailed eligibility criteria can be found on their website.

St. Louis, Missouri hosts these competitions, usually.

The winner gets seed fund capital and access to other additional resources.

19. Baylor Business New Venture Competition

Baylor launched this competition to help entrepreneurs discuss their ideas and get advice from judges.

An undergraduate student at Baylor University and McLennan Community College.

Baylor University, Waco, Texas hosts this competition.

The first prize winner receives $6000 . The other finalists win prizes ranging from $1500-$2000 .

20. 13th IOT/WT World Cup

The innovation world cup was started to give startups a chance to display their ideas and business. The competition aims to attract venture capitalists, investors, and potential business partners .

The startup should have a concept of innovative technologies.

You should have a functional prototype of the product.

Cleveland, Ohio hosts this event.

You get a chance at winning prizes worth $500,000 and connect with leading tech companies in your field.

Even if you don’t receive funds, there’s a lot of chance to network, get exposure, and get your ideas validated. Especially, if you are someone who’s new in the business space business plan competitions are a great way to learn the ropes of the trade.

So, go ahead, write your business plan , look up the details, and register for a competition that fits your business the best!

Build your Business Plan Faster

with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance.

About the Author

Radhika is an economics graduate and likes to read about every subject and idea she comes across. Apart from that she can discuss her favorite books to lengths( to the point you\'ll start feeling a little annoyed) and spends most of her free time on Google word coach.

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Development i-Teams

Have you ever wondered how new ideas can help people in the developing world and contribute to sustainable development? Are you interested in gaining hands-on skills and experience? Then our Development i-Teams programme is for you! This term’s projects will investigate the market needs for a proven methodology for promoting social cohesion, a self-contained system for sterilising medical equipment, and a charity aiming to mitigate the global risks of volcanic eruptions. The i-Teams course includes hands-on teamwork investigating the real-world potential of an innovative university technology, supported by a series of weekly lectures. No previous commercial or scientific background needed, just an interest in using technology to make the world a better place.

Dates: Development i-Teams sessions will take place on Tuesday evenings from 7 May to 11 June 2024

Location: Institue of Manufacturing, Alan Reece Building, 17 Charles Babbage Rd, Cambridge, CB3 0FS

Visit i-Team’s website to learn more and apply

Deadline for applications

30 April 2024

Development i-Teams sessions

7 May – 11 June 2024

Barclays eagle labs: from concept to conversation – attracting and engaging your first customers.

A live online presentation by Babita Devi, Accelerate Cambridge and Barclays Eagle Labs mentor, followed by a Q&A. In this session, Babita equips early-stage ventures with the tools and strategies needed to turn a great idea into a thriving customer base. She focuses on how to build successful, customer-centric businesses from the outset to help you convert followers into paying customers. Learn how to refine your target audience and craft a compelling value proposition. You’ll also discover how to demonstrate the power of your product or service to convert interest into action. If you can’t attend the live session, we’ll be sending a link to all registered attendees after the event, so you can watch it whenever you like.

Visit the Barclays Eagle Labs website to learn more and register

15 May 2024

Geovation awards 2024.

The Geovation Geospatial Innovation Awards celebrate groundbreaking solutions that harness the power of geospatial data to empower people, shape landscapes, and safeguard our planet.

This prestigious award recognises visionaries who are revolutionising the world through geospatial innovation across five categories:

Cities of the future
Nature and environment
Protection of life
Contribution to diversity
Scottish geospatial technology, sponsored by Geovation Scotland (a collaboration between Registers of Scotland and Ordnance Survey)

Who is it for? Individuals, startups, students, researchers as well as companies, working on solutions and projects in the geospatial industry are encouraged to apply. Whether you’re a seasoned innovator or a fresh trailblazer, the awards welcomes applicants from around the world at any stage.

What is the reward? The awards offer global recognition and a chance to take centre stage alongside fellow game-changers in the geospatial industry. Selected winners receive well-deserved acclaim and visibility within the Geospatial industry. Entries and attendance are free!

Visit the Geospacial Innovation Awards page to learn more and submit your entry

Business Weekly Awards

The annual Business Weekly Awards are open for nominations and entries until 30 June 2024.

We are delighted to be sponsoring the  Cambridge Judge Graduate Business of the Year .

The awards are an excellent opportunity to raise your profile or that of your business, highlight achievements and benefit from the associated publicity. Many of the companies that have won awards have gone on to receive further investment and honours.

For a Cambridge-based company that has shown outstanding commercial potential or success over the last 12 months, either founded by a University of Cambridge alumnus or which has significantly contributed to the employment and retention locally of Cambridge graduate talent.

Visit the Business Weekly website to learn more about the Awards

Deadline for entries

30 June 2024

Presentation banquet

11 September 2024

Enter award

About previous Business Weekly Awards

Business Weekly Awards 2019

Congratulations to Business Weekly Awards 2019 winners. We are delighted to have sponsored two awards: Cambridge Judge Business School Woman Entrepreneur of the Year awarded to Poppy Gustafsson, Co-CEO of Darktrace and Graduate Business of the Year awarded to Arm.

Business Weekly Awards 2018

Congratulations to all the winners of the Business Weekly Awards 2018. Amongst the list Heather Richards, CEO of Transversal, awarded Cambridge Judge Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award and Frontier Developments awarded Graduate Business of the Year Award.

Csm 2017 news businessweeklyawards 883x432 f26e7f1696

Business Weekly Awards 2017

Dr Su Metcalfe, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of LifNano Therapeutics was named winner of the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.

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Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre Cambridge Judge Business School Trumpington Street Cambridge CB2 1AG UK

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How to Succeed at Business Plan Competitions

Workshop information.

Business plan competitions are an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs to take their ideas to the next level. Whether you’re a fledgling startup or an experienced business owner, crafting a winning business plan can be the difference between success and failure. But with so many competitors vying for the same prize, how can you make sure your plan stands out? Our ‘How to Succeed at Business Plan Competitions’ workshop is designed to give you all the tools and knowledge you need to put together a winning business plan. From understanding the judging criteria to crafting a compelling presentation, this workshop will provide you with the skills, strategies and confidence you need to stand out from the crowd and take your business to the next level. Register now and take the first step towards achieving your entrepreneurial dreams.

Understanding the judging criteria

Business viability: Do the numbers add up?
Projected growth: Will your idea grow?
Return on investment: Will your plan generate enough return to justify its cost? To help you assess how well your plan meets these criteria, try to answer the following questions. You can then compare the answers with how other competitors have scored in similar competitions.
What is the purpose of your business? In other words, why is this idea necessary, and why will people want to buy it?
Who are your target customers? Who are they, why will they buy your product, and what are their needs?
What is the market size for your product or service?
What is your financial model, showing how you plan to generate revenue?
What are the risks associated with your plan? What are the potential risks, and how will you mitigate them?
What are the key milestones the business will need to achieve?
How will the business generate profits?
What are the long-term goals and objectives?
What are you doing to promote your business?

Crafting a winning business plan

Return on investment: Will your plan generate enough return to justify its cost?

Crafting a compelling presentation

Tips for creating a persuasive pitch.

Know your competition. When entering a business plan competition, it’s important to know what other competitors are submitting. There are many business plan competitions online with various formats and topics.

To get an idea of what other competitors are submitting, view the contest’s website and competitor information.

Tailor your pitch. In order to stand out in the crowd and win votes, you need to tailor your pitch to the judges’ needs. To do this, you need to understand what they want from a business plan. What are the judges looking for, and how can you address those needs?

Create a list. Judges want to see a clear outline of your business and its goals. Make sure to include a list at the beginning of your presentation. It should include both a detailed overview of your business and a list of your key features.

Share your story. Judges want to hear the story behind your business and the people behind it. Share your story with enthusiasm and enthusiasm. This will keep the judges engaged and interested.

Stay on track. Judges will often times pay attention to the time allotted for the competition, so stay within the time limits. They will often look at the visuals and not just the words.

Prowess presentation skills. Judges will often look at presentation skills as well as the content itself. Present your business plan in a clear, engaging and visually appealing manner.

Use PowerPoints, charts and other visuals in your pitch. This will help keep the judges engaged and interested in your presentation.

Q&A and conclusion

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Risk Warning - Summary

Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. NextFin promotes high - risk investments and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong.

Take 2 minutes to learn more.

Investing in equity and debt crowdfunding involves high risks, which may include long-term investment horizons, illiquidity, lack of income, defaulted loans and potential dilution. Any investor needs to be in the position to afford a total loss of capital invested. Investments that are made via Peer to Peer platforms should not be considered deposits like a bank. Your capital is at risk and is not covered by the Financial Service Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

NextFin is targeted at members who have the knowledge and experience to understand these risks and make their own investment decisions. You will NOT invest through NextFin but through the relevant crowdfunding website which also has signed off the content as a Financial Promotion on its own website. NextFin is not the originator of the financial promotions that appear on its site. However we do to the best of our ability carry out limited compliance checks on the originator and the company seeking funding to seek to ensure they are conforming to FCA regulations and anti-money laundering equity/requirements as appropriate. Business Agent Limited, trading as NextFin, takes no responsibility for this information or for any recommendations or opinions made by the companies or its users.

The pitch rating report prepared by CrowdRating and published on NextFin.co.uk does not constitute a personal recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell investments. The pitch rating report should be used as part of your own research to assess whether or not you should make an investment, but only as a single factor and not as a definitive source. If you require advice based on your personal circumstances or are in any doubt about investing, you should obtain advice from an appropriately qualified independent professional. Pitch rating reports are based on publicly available information, including information provided by the investment issuer. CrowdRating assesses that third party information without verifying its accuracy and does not make any representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the information on which it bases its assessments. CrowdRating’s responsibility for their contents is set out in the CrowdRating Terms and Conditions . Business Agent has not prepared or reviewed the contents of the pitch rating reports and is not responsible to you for their contents. Nothing in this Summary shall limit or exclude any liability CrowdRating owes to you under the UK regulatory system. The information and opinions are provided as at the date of the report and are subject to change without notice.

Capital invested in crowdfunding projects is at risk and you may lose some or all of your investment and/or find it difficult to sell. If the investment issuer defaults on its obligations to you, you will not be entitled to compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. You should only invest in illiquid securities as part of a diversified investment portfolio. Neither CrowdRating nor Business Agent offers personal recommendations on whether investments are suitable for you in light of your investment objectives and financial circumstances.

Click here for our full risk warning.

Warning Notice: The data presented on our NextFin website was compiled to the best of our knowledge and based on the limited checks performed at the time of publishing. While we strive to ensure accuracy, we cannot verify the completeness or correctness of the information, as we have not conducted full due diligence on the investment opportunities ourselves. Therefore, it is imperative that investors use this data for historical, comparative, and research purposes only. The offering may have expired or the company may no longer exist. The data has been sourced directly from the alternative site at the date of publishing. Investors should conduct their own due diligence before making any investment decisions.

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risk warning

Investments.

Investing in the shares of start-up and early-stage companies can be satisfying and financially rewarding. But it is also very risky.

For example:

Loss of investment

There is a significant risk that you will lose your investment. Most start-up companies fail, and it can be many years before even the most successful start-up company begins to pay dividends. You are therefore much more likely to lose your investment than you are to see a return of your capital and a profit;

Lack of liquidity

If you make an investment, you will probably not be able to sell it for many years. Although it is sometimes possible to sell shares in a start-up company to other shareholders in the same company, it is much more likely that a share sale will be impossible unless and until the company is listed on a stock exchange or bought by another company. Even the most successful of start-up companies can take years to get to the point where it can be listed or sold;

Your investment will probably be diluted. If you invest, you will receive shares in the company. If the company needs to raise more capital at a later date, it may issue new shares. If those shares are offered to existing investors and you choose not to buy any more shares, your share of the company will decline. Your share of the company will also decline if the company only offers its new shares to new investors. The company might also want or need to offer its new shares on better terms than the terms available on its existing shares. For example, the new shares might have preferential rights to dividends or sale proceeds, a right of first refusal on further share issues, or better voting rights than the existing shares. Each of these things is likely to be to your disadvantage.

Rarity of dividends

Dividends are payments made by a business to its shareholders from the company’s profits. Most of the companies pitching for equity are start-ups or early stage companies, and these companies will rarely pay dividends to their investors. This means that you are unlikely to see a return on your investment until you are able to sell your shares. Profits are typically re-invested into the business to fuel growth and build shareholder value. Businesses have no obligation to pay shareholder dividends.

The need for diversification when you invest

Diversification involves spreading your money across multiple investments to reduce risk. However, it will not lessen all types of risk. Diversification is an essential part of investing. Investors should only invest a proportion of their available investment funds and should balance this with safer, more liquid investments

Donations and rewards

Giving money to a company can be satisfying; especially if it’s doing – or wants to do – something you think is worthwhile. However, if you decide to give money to a company and it reaches its minimum target, it will be impossible, or almost impossible, to get it back - even if you change your mind immediately.

Loans and P2P Investments

Lending money to start-up and early-stage companies can be satisfying and financially rewarding. But it is also involves risk including Loss of investment and interest payments, Lack of liquidity, Restricted redemption rights, Unsecured investments and being bottom of the chain to be paid when a business winds up. Most start-ups fail, and it can be many months or years before a successful start-up begins to make enough money to be able repay its debts. There is a significant risk that the company you lend money to:

• Will not be able to pay you back. If the company you lend money to cannot afford to repay you, you will lose some or all of the money you loaned to the company. You will also lose some or all of the interest you expected to receive in return for your loan;

• Will not be able to pay you back on time. If the company you lend money to cannot afford to repay you when the repayments are due, you may have to wait – perhaps for many months or years – to recover the money you loaned to the company and the interest you expected to receive in return for your loan;

• Will become insolvent. If the company you lend money to cannot afford to pay its debts to you or to its other creditors, the company may be wound up, dissolved or put it into receivership, liquidation or administration. If any of these things happen, you may not be able to recover the money you loaned to the company or the interest you expected to receive in return for your loan. You may also have to wait many months or years to recover any payment, and that payment may be much less that you would have been entitled to receive if the company had not become insolvent. This might happen because some of the company’s creditors (including the receiver, liquidator or administrator) might be entitled to receive their money before other creditors, and when they have been paid, the company might not have sufficient funds left to pay you.

• Investments that are made via Peer to Peer platforms should not be considered deposits like a bank. Your capital is at risk and is not covered by the Financial Service Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Risk Information

Estimated reading time: 2 min

Due to the potential for losses, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) considers these investments to be high risk.

What are the key risks?

Investments in property related shares are typically made through single purpose companies for a specific project. Investors in these shares can lose 100% of the money they invested.
Most bond investments are in start-up businesses. Investors in these bonds often lose 100% of the money they invested, as most start-up businesses fail.
Many peer-to-peer (P2P) loans are made to borrowers who can’t borrow money from traditional lenders such as banks. These borrowers have a higher risk of not paying you back.
Advertised rates of return aren’t guaranteed. If a borrower doesn’t pay you back as agreed, you could earn less money than expected. A higher advertised rate of return means a higher risk of losing your money.
Certain investments can be held in an Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA). An IFISA does not reduce the risk of the investment or protect you from losses, so you can still lose all your money. It only means that any potential gains from your investment will be tax free.
NextFin carries out limited checks on the businesses you are investing in, more details can be found in the Risk Statement. You should do your own research before investing.
Even if the business you invest in is successful, investment projects can overrun which can extend the length of time your funds are tied up in the investment.
Property investment projects rarely offer to pay you back through dividends. You should not expect to get your money back this way.
The platform does not offer a secondary market. While another investor may be interested in buying your investment, there is no guarantee you will find a buyer at the price you are willing to sell.
Putting all your money into a single business or type of investment for example, is risky. Spreading your money across different investments makes you less dependent on any one to do well. A good rule of thumb is not to invest more than 10% of your money in high-risk investments .
If the platform fails, it may be impossible for you to collect money on your loan. It could take years to get your money back, or you may not get it back at all. Even if the platform has plans in place to prevent this, they may not work in a disorderly failure.
If an investment project overruns (time or costs) the company may issue new shares or increase its borrowings. This could mean that the value of your investment reduces as a result of more debt to pay or more shareholders to be repaid.
Any new shares or additional borrowing may be payable before the existing shares or bonds which could further reduce your chances of getting a return on your investment.
Protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), in relation to claims against failed regulated firms, does not cover poor investments in P2P loans or poor investment performance. You may be able to claim if you received regulated advice to invest in P2P, and the adviser has since failed. Try the FSCS investment protection checker here .
Protection from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) does not cover poor investment performance. If you have a complaint against an FCA-regulated platform, FOS may be able to consider it. Learn more about FOS protection here .

If you are interested in learning more about how to protect yourself, visit the FCA’s website here.

For further information about investment-based and loan-based crowdfunding, visit the FCA’s website here.

Further details on the risks involved in investing through NextFin can be found here.

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Write a business plan

Download free business plan templates and find help and advice on how to write your business plan.

Business plan templates

Download a free business plan template on The Prince’s Trust website.

You can also download a free cash flow forecast template or a business plan template on the Start Up Loans website to help you manage your finances.

Business plan examples

Read example business plans on the Bplans website.

How to write a business plan

Get detailed information about how to write a business plan on the Start Up Donut website.

Why you need a business plan

A business plan is a written document that describes your business. It covers objectives, strategies, sales, marketing and financial forecasts.

A business plan helps you to:

clarify your business idea
spot potential problems
set out your goals
measure your progress

You’ll need a business plan if you want to secure investment or a loan from a bank. Read about the finance options available for businesses on the Business Finance Guide website.

It can also help to convince customers, suppliers and potential employees to support you.

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Business planning

How to write a business plan

24 April 2024

More like this Less like this

If you're planning to launch a start-up or small business, this guide on how to write a business plan will help you create an effective road map to success. A thoughtfully researched, well-structured business plan can give you greater clarity on your business’s vision, help you avoid potential pitfalls and can help ensure you stay on track for your business goals. Read on to discover the essential elements of business planning, common mistakes to avoid, and business plan tips on how to make your plan compelling and ready for investors.

What is a business plan? Why is a business plan important? What to consider when writing a business plan? What to include in a business plan? Business plan formats How to write a business plan How to start a business plan What does a business plan look like? How long should a business plan be? Common business plan mistakes FAQ on creating a business plan

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a strategic document that details your business's objectives and the steps you’ll take to achieve them.

It is a tool that covers everything from your business strategy and key goals to financial projections and management structure. A business plan is also your opportunity to describe your company or proposed project in detail, showcasing both your short-term and long-term goals, budget details, and unique selling propositions (USPs).

Let's dive into understanding what a business plan looks like, why it's so important, and how you can create one for your business.

Person sitting at desk in co-working space with a laptop, writing in a notebook

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is important because it helps you create an effective plan for your new enterprise that allows you to make informed decisions, set clear goals, and manage your enterprise effectively.

The importance of a business plan becomes clear when you want to set your business apart from the competition.

Here’s how a business plan can help:

Guidance and structure: A plan outlines your goals and strategies, providing a roadmap for your business.
Attracting investment: It's essential for attracting investors and lenders who need to understand your strategy before funding it.
Identifying strengths and weaknesses: Business plan writing helps identify potential pitfalls and strengths in your business idea.
Planning for growth: Creates a strategy for facilitating future growth and expansion.
Understanding your market: Includes research that helps you understand your target audience and competition.

What to consider when writing a business plan

When you write a business plan, there are important questions you need to consider.

Step 1. Understand your target market

The first step is understanding your target market. Who are they? What do they need? How will your product or service cater to these needs?

Your business plan should be designed to serve this audience. You’ll need to conduct thorough market research and include this data in your plan.

Step 2. Define your business goals

The second step is to clearly define your business goals. What do you want to achieve in the next year, five years, or ten years?

Having clear, measurable objectives will guide your business plan and help you stay focused on your end goal.

Step 3. Know your USP

Next, consider your unique selling proposition (USP). This is what sets you apart from the competition. Highlighting your USP in your business plan will not only help you stand out but also attract potential investors.

The financial aspect is another key factor. You need to have a clear understanding of your financial needs, cash flow projections, and profitability forecasts. This information is particularly important if you're seeking funding from investors or lenders.

Lastly, remember that your business plan is a living document. It should evolve as your business grows and changes.

Be prepared to review and update it regularly to reflect new goals, strategies, or market conditions. This flexibility will ensure that your business plan remains relevant and effective.

What should you include in a business plan?

When developing a business plan, it can be helpful to first look at business plan examples in your relevant industry. There is no fixed business plan template, but many plans will include the following elements:

1. Executive summary

Your business plan should start with a succinct overview of your plan that highlights the key points and creates a strong initial impression. It should be compelling enough to encourage readers to read further.

2. Company description

This section should provide an overview of what your business does, the problems it solves, and the market it serves.

3. Market analysis

The market analysis section requires a thorough understanding of your industry, target market, and competition. You should demonstrate knowledge of market trends, customer needs, and the competitive landscape.

4. Business goals

Define both your short-term and long-term objectives to provide a clear vision of where you want your business to be in the future. You can also describe how you plan to achieve these goals.

5. Products and services

You should describe what you're selling or what services you offer, highlighting how your offerings stand out from the competition.

6. Financial plan

You should include a detailed overview of your finances, including cash flow statements and profit projections. This section shows potential investors that you have a solid understanding of the financial aspects of running a business.

Your business plan is a marketing document. It should be concise, engaging, and persuasive, convincing potential investors, partners, and employees of the viability and potential of your business.

Business plan formats

Business plan format can vary depending on industry. For instance, a restaurant's business plan might feature a sample menu and location demographics, while a tech start-up may focus on development timelines and patent protections.

A small business plan is likely to look very different to a large business plan. Tailor your business plan to your specific industry and business type.

The complexity of your business plan might also depend on its purpose. If you're seeking significant investment, you'll need detailed financial projections. However, if the plan is mainly for internal use, you might focus more on strategy and team organisation.

In short, while there are common components in every business plan, the specifics can vary widely. Ensure your business plan is relevant to your industry, audience, and business needs.

Writing a business plan requires research and attention to detail for each section. Below, you’ll find a 9-step guide for researching and defining each element in the plan.

Write an executive summary
Draft a business description
Conduct market analysis
List your management and organisation structure
Outline services or products
Define your marketing and sales strategy
Describe your funding needs
Plan financial projections
Appendix of supporting documents

Two people sitting at a table smiling, one is typing on a laptop and the other is holding a pen and notebook

1. Write an executive summary

This is a brief overview of your business plan. It should include your business’s name, location, and the products or services you offer. Also mention your mission statement and your business’s USP (unique selling proposition). Remember, the executive summary should be concise yet compelling, persuading the reader to learn more about your business.

Your executive summary should include:

Business concept: What does your company do? What are your products or services? This section should clearly articulate your business’s core concept.
Company information: Include the company’s name, when it was founded (if applicable), the names of the founders and their roles, the team and size, and location of premises.
Growth highlights: If your business is already established, describe how much it has grown since inception, including financial or market highlights.
Products/services: Describe what you sell or the service you offer. Explain how it benefits your customers and what makes it unique to the market.
Financial information: If you’re seeking funding from investors, include a brief overview of your projections and what you’re asking for.
Future plans: Summarise where you plan to take your business in the future. This could include potential growth, new products or services, or expansion into new markets.

2. Draft a business description

Describe your business in detail. Include the business structure (sole trader, partnership, limited company), the nature of your business, and the marketplace needs that your business aims to fulfil.

3. Conduct market analysis

This is where you demonstrate that you understand your industry and market. Include information about your target customers, including their demographics and buying habits. Also analyse your competition, outlining their strengths and weaknesses.

What else to include:

Industry overview: This gives a broad view of your industry. You can include its size, growth rate, trends, and outlook.
Target market: Identify who your customers are. You should define them by demographic factors like age, gender, income level, and geographic location. Also consider psychographic factors such as lifestyle, values, and attitudes.
Market need: Determine what problem your product or service solves for your target market. This could be a gap in the market, an unfulfilled need, or an improvement on existing products or services.
Competition analysis: Identify your direct and indirect competitors. Analyse their strengths and weaknesses, and how your business compares.
Pricing and forecast: Set your pricing strategy based on your understanding of the market and competition. Include a forecast for your potential market share and sales.
Regulatory environment: Understand any laws or regulations that could impact your industry. This includes permits, licenses, or regulatory compliance requirements.
SWOT analysis: Identify your business's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT). This helps you understand your business's position within the marketplace.

4. List your management and organisation structure

Outline your business's organisational structure. Identify the owners, management team, and any key employees. Include an organisational chart if possible.

5. Outline services or products

Describe what your business offers. If you sell products, explain how they are produced, their cost, and how you will sell them. If you provide services, describe them in detail, and list any associated costs.

6. Define your marketing and sales strategy

Detail how you plan to attract and retain customers. Include your sales strategy and the marketing channels you plan to use. Here's what it should include:

Target market: Define who your customers are - their demographics, behaviours, and needs – and what kinds of marketing message they are likely to respond to. This will guide your marketing efforts.
Unique selling proposition (USP): Identify what makes your product or service unique. How does it stand out from the competition? How will you convey this in your marketing?
Pricing strategy: Explain how you have priced your products or services and why this will appeal to your target market.
Sales plan: Detail how you'll sell your product. Will it be online, in a physical store, or both? Will you have a sales team? How will you bring your business to the target market?
Promotional strategy: Describe how you will promote your business. This could include social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, advertising, public relations, and more.
Retention strategy: Outline how you plan to keep your customers coming back. This could involve excellent customer service, loyalty programs, regular updates or improvements to the product or service, etc.
Partnerships and collaborations: If applicable, discuss any partnerships or collaborations that will play a role in your marketing and sales plan.
Measurement: Define how you'll measure the success of your marketing and sales efforts. This could be through key performance indicators (KPIs) like website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, etc.

Your marketing and sales strategy should be flexible. As you learn more about your market and customers, adjust your strategies accordingly.

7. Describe your funding needs

If you are seeking investors or applying for business loans, you should include a funding request section within your business plan. It should include:

Funding request: Start with the exact amount of funding you are seeking. Be clear and specific.
Use of funds: Explain in detail how you plan to use the funds. This could be for starting costs, working capital, business expansion, or any other business expenses.
Future funding: If you anticipate needing additional funding in the future, mention this. Provide an estimate of how much you might need, when you might need it, and what for.
Business financials: Provide a snapshot of your financial statements and forecasts. Include your income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, business loans, and any other relevant financial data.
Exit strategy: If you're seeking equity investment, describe your exit strategy. This could be selling the company, merging with another company, or going public with an IPO (initial public offering).
Repayment plan: If you're requesting a loan, outline your plan for repaying it. Provide a schedule and method of repayment.

When considering where to secure funding, it's essential to explore your options. You may want to consider our app-based HSBC Kinetic Current Account for sole traders and single director shareholder businesses, or our Small Business Bank Account for small enterprises. Eligibility criteria apply.

Both accounts are designed to support the growth and financial management of your business. These platforms provide a range of services that cater to your business's needs, from daily transactions to long-term financial planning.

8. Plan financial projections

Provide a forecast of your business's financial future. This can include balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements for the next three to five years. Consider incorporating HSBC Kinetic into your financial planning for a comprehensive and digital-first approach to managing your business finances. Eligibility criteria apply.

Here are examples of what to include:

Sales forecast: This is the amount of money you anticipate from sales of your products or services. It should be broken down monthly for the first year, then annually for the following two to five years.
Income statement (profit and loss statement): This document shows your business’s profitability over time. It should include revenue, costs of goods sold, operating expenses, and net income.
Cash flow statement: This demonstrates where your business is earning and spending money by highlighting how balance sheets and income affect your cash or cash equivalents.
Balance sheet: This document provides a snapshot of your business's financial position at a particular moment in time. It lists your assets, liabilities, and equity.
Capital expenditure budget: If there are large expenses for long-term assets such as property or equipment, these should be detailed here.
Break-even analysis: This analysis shows when your company can cover all the expenses and make a profit.
Financial ratios: These ratios compare financial metrics from your financial statements to assess your company’s financial health. They can provide valuable insights into how well the company is performing.

Your projections should be realistic, with all assumptions clearly stated. If you're a start-up with no financial history, base your projections on research and industry averages. If you're an existing business, use your past financial performance as a guide.

It can be beneficial to seek professional advice when preparing this section of your business plan, as it will be scrutinised by investors and lenders.

9. Appendix of supporting documents

An optional section that includes any additional supporting documents such as legal documents, permits, and contracts.

Writing a business plan is not a one-time event. It should be updated regularly as your business grows and changes.

How to start a business plan

Starting a business plan generally involves seven practical steps and may require consultation with other professionals. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to start:

Understand the purpose of your plan:

Research your industry:, outline your plan:, write the plan:, review and edit:, get feedback:, finalise your plan:.

Here are some people you might want to talk to when you write a business plan:

Industry peers or mentors: People with experience in your field can provide valuable insights and advice.
Business advisors or coaches: These professionals can offer guidance and help you avoid common pitfalls.
Accountants: They can assist with the financial aspects of your plan, including projections and identifying potential costs.
Potential customers: Speaking with your target audience can help you understand their needs and preferences, which can inform your marketing and sales plan.
Legal advisors: If your business has any legal considerations, such as patents or regulations, a legal advisor can ensure these are properly addressed in your plan.

A business plan isn't a static document - it should evolve with your business. Regularly updating your plan can help you adapt to changes and stay on track towards your goals.

How long should a business plan be?

The recommended length of a business plan can vary depending on the complexity of your business model and the purpose of the plan. However, a typical business plan ranges from 15 to 35 pages.

What does a business plan look like?

Your business plan can and should be branded to reflect your business identity. Here's how:

Cover page:

Headers and sub-headers:, colour scheme:, images and graphics:, tone of voice:, consistency:.

Your plan is a reflection of your business. By incorporating your brand into the design, you're not just creating a strategy document - you're showcasing your business's identity.

FAQ on creating a business plan

You may have many questions when creating your new business plan. Below we look at some of the common ones.

How much information should I include in my business plan?

Your business plan should be concise yet comprehensive, providing all the necessary information. The length might also depend on whether you're writing the plan for internal use, for potential investors, or for a loan application, as each audience might have different expectations.

It can be helpful to mark out which sections are for which audience, so that you can edit into a new document as required, rather than starting a new business plan from scratch.

What is the proper business plan format?

Printed versions of your business plan should be on standard A4 paper, bound neatly, and presented in a professional manner. All electronic versions should be in a PDF format and have a clear file name for ease of sharing.

The layout should be clear and easy to navigate, with headers, sub-headers, bullet points, and plenty of white space to make the document easy to read.

Common business plan mistakes

There are common mistakes that businesses can make when writing a plan. These include:

Lack of planning:

Wrong audience:, it’s too long:, insufficient market research:, unrealistic financial projections:, not addressing potential risks:, poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation:, unclear business model:.

Writing a business plan may seem like a daunting task at first, but with careful planning, thorough research, and thoughtful consideration of each section - from the executive summary to financial projections - you can create a powerful document that serves as a roadmap for your business's success.

Business plan template

Remember, a business plan is not a static document. As your business grows and evolves, so too should your business plan. Regular reviews and updates will ensure your plan remains relevant and continues to guide your strategic decision-making.

Whether you're seeking investment, planning for growth, or simply setting the course for your day-to-day operations, a well-crafted business plan is an invaluable tool for every business owner. With the advice and guidance provided in this guide, you're now well-equipped to create a robust and compelling business plan.

HSBC Business Bank Accounts

Publications

Business Plan 2023/24

Our Business Plan details the work we'll do over the next 12 months to help deliver the commitments in our Strategy.

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Introduction

Our objectives, wholesale markets, cost of living and consumer duty, our locations, data and technology led regulation, who we work with, cryptoassets, deferred payment credit (exempt buy-now-pay-later, bnpl), annual funding requirement, fees consultation, prioritising our work, our regulatory programme, how we'll deliver our commitments, dealing with problem firms, improving the redress framework, reducing harm from firm failure, improving oversight of appointed representatives, reducing and preventing financial crime, delivering assertive action on market abuse, putting consumers' needs first, enabling consumers to help themselves, a strategy for positive change: our environmental, social and governance (esg) priorities, minimising the impact of operational disruptions, preparing financial services for the future, strengthening the uk’s position in global wholesale markets, shaping digital markets to achieve good outcomes, annual funding requirement, the ora budget, financial regulatory framework, consumer duty, transformation, consumer harm campaign, scope change recovery, capital expenditure.

About the FCA
How we work
FCA outcomes and metrics
Our Strategy (PDF)
Our commitments and objectives in full (PDF)
CP23/7: Regulatory fees and levies: policy proposals for 2023/24
Business Plan 2023/24 (PDF)

We are committed to protecting consumers, enhancing market integrity, and promoting competition in the interest of consumers.

As we continue to see significant and rapid change in financial services, we remain committed to becoming a more assertive, adaptive and innovative regulator. Our work affects firms, consumers and the UK economy.

Last year we published our Strategy and set out the three themes where we are strengthening our focus and the 13 commitments to support these themes:

reducing and preventing serious harm
setting and testing higher standards
promoting competition and positive change

Together these themes help to create the conditions for financial services to deliver the outcomes we expect, and delivery of these commitments is well underway.

This Business Plan sets out how we’ll deliver the second year of our Strategy. Our Annual Report later in the year will report on progress against the activities we set out in our Business Plan 2022/23 and will provide the latest data against our outcomes and metrics .

Our strategic objective is to ensure financial services markets function well.

Our operational objectives are to:

secure an appropriate degree of protection for consumers
protect and enhance the integrity of the UK financial system
promote effective competition in the interests of consumers

We will soon also have a new secondary objective to facilitate the international competitiveness of the UK economy and its growth in the medium to long term. This is being introduced as part of the Financial Services and Markets Bill which is currently going through Parliament.

As a financial services regulator, we have an important role in the continued success of the UK financial services markets and their contribution to the UK economy.

When markets are efficiently and proportionately regulated and firms are able to compete and innovate in a safe, trusted and stable environment, it benefits consumers and investors, and it ensures the UK economy, including financial services, sustains its international competitiveness.

We fully embrace this secondary objective as already significantly in line with our approach. We will further increase our focus on international competitiveness and growth in delivering our primary objectives, while ensuring that there is no compromise on consumer protection, market integrity or competition in the interests of consumers.

Our work includes improving the attractiveness and global reach of our wholesale markets. This includes using the opportunity created by the transfer of retained EU law; sharpening our operational effectiveness through continued improvements to our authorisations processes; and providing opportunities for UK financial services companies to invest, innovate and expand in the UK through, our Sandboxes, Innovation Pathways process, leadership of the Global Financial Innovation Network and TechSprint programmes.

Accountability is a key part of ensuring we as a regulator deliver what is expected of us. We will report each year on how we’re delivering our new secondary objective and are developing how best to measure our success. As international competitiveness and growth are affected by wider Government policy (such as tax and labour markets policy), monetary policy and economic conditions, we will focus on measuring those aspects we can influence directly, and which are relevant to our policy decisions and explain where relevant the interactions with other areas of Government policy. We will focus on the key drivers of productivity and will explain how we expect our actions and outputs to facilitate international competitiveness and growth.

The challenges of the year ahead

Over the past year we have seen record levels of volatility. We expect the economic and geopolitical environment to remain highly uncertain over the year ahead. While there are some positive developments in the UK economy the situation will remain uncertain over the coming year, including a heightened risk of firm failure. Events over recent weeks including the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank UK and interventions in relation to Credit Suisse have underlined this.

Key uncertainties include:

Interest rates and inflation : Financial market expectations of interest rates in the UK and in other jurisdictions remain volatile as do expectations with respect to inflation.
The risk that unemployment increases more than currently projected : The OBR now forecasts that the UK will avoid a technical recession in 2023, but expects the economy to contract by 0.2%. While unemployment remains low, the Bank of England’s wide range of possible unemployment rate outcomes for the period 2022 Q4 to 2026 Q1 (around 3%-8%) shows there is significant uncertainty.
Potential for further declines in real household disposable incomes : Higher mortgage rates alongside the broader squeeze on real incomes are reducing consumer budgets. Pressures on real incomes may start to ease as inflation falls, but the effect on real incomes is lagged. This means that even when immediate pressures ease, some households may still have a negative cash flow.
Potential for further market volatility : Heightened geo-political tensions from the war in Ukraine still pose risks of further periods of market volatility. Markets are also on high alert for any widespread contagion from increasing volatility.

Wholesale markets have recovered from the gilts markets volatility and the impact on pension funds in the Autumn of last year and are functioning effectively. We will remain alert to potential problems and be ready to act if necessary, and participants in the wholesale markets may need to take action to manage heightened operational and market risks.

Rising interest rates and elevated inflation have contributed to an elevated number of people stretched financially and many consumers face significant financial pressure.

Our role is to make sure firms treat customers fairly, support those in difficulty and give them the information they need to make good decisions. Our work to identify and track early indications of problems is vital to enable us to respond proactively. We will continue to look for joined-up solutions, working closely with a range of partners , other regulators, Government and the devolved administrations, such as in our work with debt advice charities. The Consumer Duty which comes into force on 31 July will play a key role in underpinning this work, including for vulnerable consumers.

Many of the activities that we are already doing across a range of commitments also support those who are vulnerable or financially stretched, including those to support our commitments to Reduce and prevent financial crime and to Put consumers' needs first.

There is also potential for longer term consequences from the current cost of living pressures due to the impacts on consumers, firms and markets, for example in relation to pensions saving. We will work to understand further these consequences this year.

Our focus for 2023/24

Our Strategy is designed to be sufficiently agile to deal with and meet new challenges and opportunities. The markets we regulate are dynamic. Going into the second year of our Strategy, and with finite resources, we will keep prioritising our work to respond to these challenges.

To support our growing remit and deliver our ambitious Strategy, we have been recruiting the people we need now and for the future.

Our headcount has grown from around 3,800 at the beginning of 2022 to nearly 4,500 at the end of March 2023.

This has included significant increases in resource in: our Authorisations Division to improve operational effectiveness and deliver a more rigorous gateway; and our Enforcement and Market Oversight Division to build capacity and resilience in our case and investigation teams and enable us to act faster against firms causing harm to consumers and/or markets. We have also resourced changes in our perimeter.

We expect to increase our headcount steadily in 2023 to meet a growing remit and to enable us to deliver key aspects of our Strategy, such as the Future Regulatory Framework and in the area of data analytics.

We committed in our Business Plan 2022/23 to develop our national presence.

We opened our Leeds office in September 2022, with a specific focus on enhancing our digital and data capabilities. The Leeds office will provide capacity for over 200 colleagues based on hybrid working practices.

With over 175 colleagues now based out of our Edinburgh office, we are on track to double the number of colleagues in Scotland to over 200 as well as maintaining a presence in Cardiff and Belfast.

The scale of the FCA ambition to become a data-led regulator means that we are making significant progress across a number of data and digital programmes. These include exploiting our investment in cloud technology, implementing new digital capabilities and designing new data solutions required by the front line of the business.

Our ambition this year is to complete a major upgrade to our core regulatory system and improve our intelligence capabilities through the automation of analytics tooling, helping us detect and respond to consumer harms faster.

We are making further investments in cyber security and operational resilience, to ensure our services are secure by design, improving technical stability and efficiency for our staff and regulated firms.

We will reduce firm burden further still by implementing additional data collections improvements through our Transforming Data Collections programme which has already resulted in a reduction in firm burden this year through an improved intuitive form for 20,000 consumer credit firms.

We work closely with a range of different partners. These include consumer groups, trade associations, professional bodies, government departments, and other regulators in the UK and overseas.

We also work with four independent statutory panels when developing our policies and other regulatory decisions. The panels represent the interests of consumers and practitioners, including smaller regulated firms and financial market participants. They play an important role in advising and challenging us and bring experience, support and expertise in identifying risks to the market and to consumers. We also work with a panel on listing related issues and we expect this panel along with a cost benefit assessment panel to become statutory panels later in the year.

As proposed by the Treasury, financial promotions relating to certain cryptoassets are being brought within the scope of our regulation. The Treasury issued a consultation on 1 February 2023 on proposals for a broader future regulatory regime for cryptoassets. In preparation for this, we will be investing in additional skills to enable us to deliver on, and make changes to, the systems and procedures needed for the relevant firms, as well as the necessary changes to systems and procedures for the firms who fall within the scope of the Treasury proposals. As of the 3 April 2023, we have registered 41 cryptoasset firms under anti-money laundering rules.

In 2023/24, following the Treasury’s proposed expansion of our regulatory perimeter to include deferred payment credit (exempt buy-now-pay-later, BNPL) products, we will design and begin to implement our approach, including consultation and rulemaking and our plans for authorisation, supervision and enforcement. We will also continue to act to address harm to consumers in advance of our regulation, eg around financial promotions.

The annual funding requirement ensures we have the right level of resources for people, systems and data improvements to deliver on our Strategy and commitments.

We are working in an exceptionally challenging external environment while still delivering against, and in some parts accelerating, our challenging three-year Strategy and taking on significant new responsibilities.

A material increase in funding in cash terms is needed to ensure we can continue to protect consumers from harm, ensure market integrity and foster innovation so our economy can grow. We recognise the rising costs many firms are facing and so we are setting our proposed increase in fees below inflation, including freezing minimum and flat rate fees to ease the pressure the smallest firms and freezing application fees.

Over the past year there have been unexpected external and geopolitical events that have required us to divert resources at short notice. Our resourcing model for the year ahead needs to ensure that we can be agile and flexible with our resources.

Additionally, we need to resource activity for the Future Regulatory Framework, cryptoassets and other scope changes, and our ongoing transformation. As we go into the second year of our Strategy, we will intensify focus on driving efficiency and effectiveness in delivering our outcomes.

For more details go to our budget .

We distribute recovery of our costs between fee-payers by putting them in fee-blocks. These group together firms with similar permissions. We allocate costs between fee-blocks to align them broadly with the costs of regulating those activities and each year we adjust the allocations to reflect additional work that we are undertaking with those groups of firms. Our Fees Consultation Paper sets out what fees we will be charging over the next financial year.

See our commitments and objectives in full (PDF)

We have prioritised our work for 2023/24 to ensure we direct our resources most effectively. While we will continue to deliver across all our commitments at a similar pace as Year 1, we have decided to invest even further in our most critical commitments over the coming year.

We have taken account of the impact of the challenges in the year ahead on the outcomes in our Strategy that we want financial services firms to deliver. And we have factored in the investment and progress we have already made in the first year of our Strategy.

Where additional resources are available, we will focus on these four commitments:

Preparing financial services for the future – working with the Treasury to implement the new regulatory framework so we can address emerging harms more efficiently
Putting consumers’ needs first – to improve consumer protection and standards for all consumers and ensure our support for struggling consumers remains a priority
Reducing and preventing financial crime – prioritising this will also help protect consumers to an extent and consumers in vulnerable circumstances specifically, as they may be more susceptible to fraud. This also supports our commitment Putting consumers' needs first
Strengthening the UK's position in global wholesale markets – to help ensure that the UK continues to be seen as one of the leading global markets of choice and strengthen our ability to respond to market volatility

Implementing the outcomes of the Future Regulatory Framework review is a core part of our commitment to prepare financial services for the future. We will work with the Treasury and other regulators on the repeal of retained EU law and replace where appropriate, obligations currently found in that law with Handbook rules. We will adapt these rules so they better suit financial markets in the UK. This is a very significant programme of work, with demanding timetable both for us and market participants over the coming year. It will help ensure that we can continue to advance our operational objectives while encouraging the UK’s wider economic growth and international competitiveness in line with our secondary objective.

Scams and fraud continue to negatively impact our society. We will continue to invest in the technology we use to gain intelligence to disrupt those committing financial crime earlier, and increasingly prevent harm. We will boost our efforts to proactively identify those intent on committing financial crime trying to enter our perimeter, as well as on fraudsters operating outside our perimeter. We will build further covert capabilities into our systems to identify and disrupt fraudsters. We will also invest in raising standards in authorised firms to improve their abilities to detect and prevent financial crime. This includes a strengthened the gateway, more proactive assessments of regulated firms and more staff focused on investigating and prosecuting offenders.

The Consumer Duty is a significant shift in our expectations of firms and is particularly important as consumers face squeezed incomes and the rising cost of living. We are bolstering our resources to ensure the Consumer Duty is embedded effectively within firms and central to their technology. Alongside the Consumer Duty, we are also planning to allocate additional staff dedicated to working with firms as they support consumers struggling with higher costs of living.

Strengthening the UK's position in global wholesale markets

We are operating in an environment of significantly elevated market risk globally. We are investing very significantly in our technology and data capabilities, including to address data gaps and ingest data quicker so we can oversee markets effectively. To further enhance the UK’s position in global wholesale markets, UK markets need to function effectively and adapt to the changing international context as well as welcome new technology and innovation. For example, this year we will complete upgrades to key systems and continue automating our analytic tools, helping us detect and respond to harms faster. We will also focus on scaling up our systems, tools and applications, reducing costs. We will keep strengthening the security of our infrastructure, including in relation to cyber threats, and continue to make our systems more stable and efficient. We will reduce firm burden further by implementing more improvements to data collections. We are embarking on a series of significant regulatory reforms to support this.

This Business Plan does not cover everything we do. The Regulatory Initiatives Grid from the Financial Services Regulatory Initiatives Forum is updated twice a year and gives details of our planned regulatory programme. We also undertake a significant amount of baseline work, authorising firms, and individuals; supporting consumers who contact us – by whatever means; supporting firms with their queries and overseeing them, including responding to incidents and issues as they arise.

We also update our Perimeter Report quarterly. This report helps to explain what we do and don’t regulate. It describes specific problems we see around our perimeter, explains the ways we are proactively intervening to prevent harm and pre-empting or responding to problems. It also identifies existing gaps in legislation, areas of potential harm and our powers to act against unregulated activities, for example BNPL, crypto and artificial intelligence (AI).

The next sections provide details of our planned work against our commitments, including work already started. We provide details of the outcomes we want to achieve. These outcomes were set over a three-year time horizon in line with our Strategy and so will not change materially in Year 2. Each commitment is linked to metrics to help measure progress and performance.

Focus 1: Reducing and preventing serious harm

We aim to protect consumers from fraud and mistreatment and our focus is on protecting consumers from the harm that authorised firms can cause. We do considerable work to reduce and prevent harm caused by unauthorised firms. In response to our Strategy, we’ve continued to increase scrutiny on firms wanting to offer services to UK customers. During FY2022/23, 23% of firms applying to operate here did not become authorised.

We have issued over 1,800 warnings about potential scam firms during 2022, 400 more than the previous year, and our Consumer Hub has prevented just over £7m being lost to fraudsters.

We are increasingly improving our technologies to identify harm. For example, improving the quality of information we use in our decision-making, from the delivery of Single View supervision dashboards to intelligence interventions.

This section explains the actions we are taking to deliver across our six commitments for reducing misconduct that can cause serious harm.

Outcomes we want to achieve

Consumers and market participants have confidence that financial services firms which fail to meet the Threshold Conditions and/or should otherwise not be regulated, are identified and cancelled quickly.
Consumers and market participants trust that the FCA intervenes to stop harm to consumers and market integrity quickly.

How we will achieve the outcomes

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Build on our current risk frameworks to prioritise action against the riskiest firms and those causing harm.
Further enhance proactive and data-led detection of problem firms, intervening quickly against those causing harm to consumers and/or markets.
Use our additional resource to increase the number of firms we take action against.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Conduct specific complex Threshold Conditions test cases to identify if current legislation and policy is working. Where they don’t, we will look to make changes to help meet our aims.
Continue to identify and cancel firms that do not meet Threshold Conditions quickly and at scale, removing them from the regulated market.
Expand the types of breaches of Threshold Conditions that we take action against.

The redress system delivers timely and fair complaint resolution and compensation to consumers.
Firms that create a redress burden are more likely to bear the associated cost themselves.
Consumers understand the redress system and how to access it.
The Claims Management Company (CMC) sector delivers fair value.

How we will achieve the outcomes

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
To achieve a redress system where we can intervene assertively, which resolves complaints quickly and fairly and which consumers know how to access, we will:

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Embed the wider implications framework, launched in January 2022; working with regulatory partners to tackle common issues to prevent harm and ensure the redress system delivers timely and fair resolution.
The next steps on the Compensation Framework review to make sure that firms that owe redress are more likely to bear the cost, we will:

Outcomes we want to achieve

Firms meet their financial resource requirements so that they can conduct business, wind down and, where applicable, fail without causing significant harm to consumers and market participants.
Client assets and funds are appropriately held so that if the firm fails, they are returned as quickly, and as whole, as possible.
Firms subject to financial or other stress which may lead to firm failure are quickly identified and the firm rectifies the situation, winds down solvently or enters insolvency in a way which minimises harm to consumers and market participants.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Introduce a new regulatory return requiring 20,000 solo regulated financial services firms to provide a baseline level of information about their financial resilience. This is a key step in embedding a data-led approach that helps us better identify financial and other stresses which may cause firm failure.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Embedding the . This will include publishing findings from the IFPR implementation and examples of best practice, to help firms better understand their financial resource requirements.
Input into developing FCA policies for cryptoassets. This will help develop standards for financial resilience requirements in an additional sector.
Identify harm and act to reduce it quickly by using data dashboards and other tools to identify emerging issues. This will support our move to being a data-led regulator.
Use our powers more assertively to start relevant insolvency processes to reduce harm from firms.
Identify harm and reduce it proactively and quickly including:
Monitoring higher risk business models during the first year after authorisation and during periods of high growth.

Outcomes we want to achieve

Stronger oversight by principals to reduce harm caused through ARs.

How we will achieve the outcomes

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Test that firms are properly embedding the new rules across the AR regime.
Increase and improve our engagement with firms and other stakeholders.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Use significantly improved data to better target our resources at the gateway and in supervision. We will use our new gateway forms, new regulatory returns and a dataset covering all ARs from our December 2022 information requirement (which asked principal firms for information about their ARs), as well as deeper analysis of existing data.
Strengthen our scrutiny at the regulatory gateway. This includes more engagement with principal firms as they appoint ARs and robust assessments of authorisation applications by prospective principal firms.
Undertake more assertive supervision of high-risk principals, including greater use of our regulatory tools and appropriate enforcement action.
Support the Treasury’s work on the responses to the and considering potential legislative changes.
Assess the need for further policy interventions discussed in our consultation ( ).

Financial crime remains a significant focus both for the FCA and nationally. We want consumers and market participants to have confidence that the financial services industry is safe. Over the past year we have improved our cross-organisational response to financial crime. We have built strong foundations for effectively tackling financial crime. Over the next year we will build upon these, increasingly using data-led approaches to act quickly to identify and close down weaknesses in the system and disrupt those seeking to cause harm.

However, our efforts to tackle financial crime will only be successful if the response is system-wide, including across public and private partners. Over the next year we will play a key role in driving the financial services sector’s contribution to driving down fraud and delivering the Economic Crime Plan 2.

We will continue to work on slowing the growth in both Authorised Push Payment (APP) and investment fraud, a significant milestone given the scale of fraud in the UK. Over the longer term, as the national effort mobilises with the national economic crime strategy to tackle fraud, we aim to achieve a reduction in fraud.

Our work through this commitment has the dual benefit of both reducing and preventing financial crime and also achieving our commitment to enable consumers to help themselves. We are raising consumer awareness of scams and providing consumers with ways to check against our Register. This will help to reduce the volume of fraud (particularly investment fraud) pushed on consumers. We are also taking action where we identify those intent on committing financial crime.

Outcomes we want to achieve

Slow the growth in investment fraud victims and losses.
Slow the growth in Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud cases and losses.
Reduction in financial crime by lowering the incidence of money laundering through the firms we supervise directly and improving the effectiveness of supervision by professional body supervisors.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
We will increase our use of data to better identify which firms are more susceptible to receiving the proceeds of fraud and ensure that they are doing more to stop the flow of illegitimate funds in its tracks.
Increase the volume of our proactive assessments of firms’ anti-money laundering systems and controls.
Develop further data-led analytical tools to use in our anti-money laundering supervisory work.
Ensure we have effective oversight of firms communicating and approving financial promotions including qualifying cryptoassets when they are brought within the financial promotion perimeter and that firms only do so if they have the relevant competence and expertise.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Reduce the opportunities for fraudsters to seek approval through taking a stronger approach to testing financial crime controls at the gateway.
Build on our approach for effectively supervising the anti-fraud systems and controls of regulated firms through undertaking further assessments to evaluate how they are protecting consumers from fraud and that firms are not being used as enablers of fraud. We will inform firms of the outcome of this work to help improve standards across the industry in tackling fraud.
Use a data-led approach to proactively supervise firms’ sanctions systems and controls.
Continue to raise consumer awareness around fraud by running our ScamSmart consumer campaign, focused on the areas of highest priority fraud. The campaign helps consumers spot the warning signs of scams and access tools such as the Warning List – a database of unauthorised firms. The campaign runs across loan-fee fraud, investment and pension fraud.
With additional investment we will continue to expand our intelligence-gathering capabilities and analytics to better spot and track potentially fraudulent activity at scale and reduce the average amount of money lost due to scams.
Continue our strong engagement with partners at both a strategic and tactical level, including the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC).
Continue our work to supervise cryptoassets firms’ compliance with the Money Laundering Regulations (MLRs). Improve our capability to intervene where firms risk being used as conduits for illegal activity (for example operating without registration or perpetrating fraud).
Continue to enhance our proactive supervision through the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS).
Continue to improve our capabilities to identify, alert and request that platforms take down unauthorised financial promotions, associated websites and social media accounts to see a further step change in disruption here.
With additional funding we will increase the use of our powers to disrupt, pursue and sanction those committing financial crime, fraudsters and their enablers.

Market abuse undermines the integrity of the UK financial system, eroding confidence and lowering participation, to everyone’s detriment. Firms are a vital first line of defence. They must have the right culture and safeguards in place to spot, report and reduce the risk of market abuse.

We want to continue to build resilience to market abuse across primary and secondary markets, ensure access to inside information is properly controlled and market disclosures are timely and accurate. Our aim is to have robust detection and investigation capability and deliver deterrents through a range of supervisory, civil and criminal sanctions.

Increased confidence in the integrity of UK markets which maintains high levels of participation across the buy-side and sell-side.
Timely and accurate disclosure of inside information.
Financial firms and issuers are more resilient to market abuse, having robust systems and controls, high-quality reporting practices and a strong anti-market abuse culture.
Criminal, civil and supervisory sanctions are brought to bear on wrongdoers to provide effective deterrents.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Significantly improve our capability to detect and prosecute fixed income and commodities market manipulation, through increased data capture, improved analytics, a dedicated non-equity manipulation team and increased enforcement resources.
Coordinated approach across the FCA on very high-risk firms where multiple regulatory failures, including market abuse, undermine market confidence.
In primary markets, continuing our work on timely and accurate market disclosures, augmenting this with an increased focus on prevention and compliance via better education and further work on detecting potentially misleading disclosures.
Further work on transparency of Persons Discharging Management Responsibility (PDMR) dealings and developing a strategy for combatting unlawful disclosure, helping to limit opportunities for insider dealing.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Delivering the Market Surveillance Refresh. Leveraging the market surveillance infrastructure to improve market monitoring across the FCA.
Provide guidance through Technical Notes, which we consult on through our Primary Markets Bulletin publications.
Continue to supervise issuers to ensure they apply these standards.
Increase our capability to influence the development of international data standards.

Focus 2: Setting and testing higher standards

We have made four commitments for improving our rules and standards. These focus on the impact firms’ actions have on consumers and markets.

This commitment includes key areas of work including the Consumer Duty, a core part of our work on the cost of living, financial inclusion and access to cash. The Consumer Duty sets a higher standard of care that firms must provide to consumers in retail financial markets. With firms focusing on delivering good consumer outcomes, we will all benefit from increased competition and innovation and we should see a reduced need for future regulatory and supervisory action.

Our work on financial inclusion is focused on addressing issues consumers face when accessing the products and services they need. We have also added an outcome to this commitment to reflect the importance of appropriate treatment of consumers struggling with debt due to cost of living pressures. Other elements of our response to cost of living pressures are reflected in existing outcomes and addressed through a number of other business plan commitments, such as reducing and preventing financial crime.

Consumers are sold products and services that are designed to meet their needs, characteristics and objectives.
Consumers pay a price for products and services that represents fair value, and poor value products and services are removed from markets.
Consumers are equipped with the right information to make effective, timely and properly informed decisions about their products and services.
Consumers receive good customer service.
Consumers have confidence in financial services markets.
Firms innovate through the Consumer Duty, supporting the growth of the financial services industry and driving effective competition for customers.
Appropriate access to financial services is maintained.
Firms support consumers to sustainably manage their debts.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
The additional funding assigned to Consumer Duty will allow us to undertake sector-specific supervisory work, focused on the priorities detailed in our . Through targeted multi-firm work, for example on fair value and sludge practices, we will identify, assertively supervise and effectively enforce against activities which undermine effective competition and good consumer outcomes.
Review our debt advice rules to ensure they set the right framework for good quality debt advice.
Consult on changes to our mortgage, consumer credit, and overdraft rules to improve outcomes for consumers in financial difficulties, building on guidance introduced during the pandemic.
Design and begin to deliver a robust and proportionate regime for Deferred Payment Credit (DPC) products (currently known as exempt BNPL) as they come into our regulatory perimeter.
The additional funding will also allow us to create an additional Interventions team within Enforcement. This function will be ready from day one of the duty coming into force to enable rapid action where immediate consumer harm is detected. Further investigative resource will also ensure swifter investigation of any potentially serious misconduct discovered.
Once the Financial Services and Markets Bill has received Royal Assent, we will consult on rules to implement a new regulatory regime that supports the future of cash access.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Make the Consumer Duty an integral part of our regulatory approach and mindset at every stage of the regulatory lifecycle - including authorisation, policy development, supervision and enforcement priorities and processes. We will focus initially on the highest priority issues and firms.
Work closely with firms and their trade bodies, consumer organisations and wider stakeholders during the Consumer Duty implementation period to provide support and help identify examples of good and poor practice.
Improve our data monitoring capabilities including:
Combine insights on consumers’ needs and experiences through our consumer research and partnerships work to help to ensure we are making data-led, evidence-based decisions and help identify areas where we need to take targeted supervisory and enforcement action.
Use our regulatory toolkit, including our powers to enforce consumer protection legislation – eg Consumer Rights Act 2015 - to address harm where we see poor practice.
In response to the rising cost of living, help ensure firms give retail customers in financial difficulty appropriate forbearance and that referrals for debt advice are efficient and effective. We will:
Help ensure consumers receive appropriate debt advice. We will:
The additional funding assigned to this commitment will also enable us to continue our work with regulatory partners and consumer organisations across different sectors to ensure clear signposting to support services and consistent treatment of customers in financial difficulty.
Participate in the Financial Inclusion Policy Forum and work closely with the Government and other bodies to support consumer access to products and services.
Supervise bank branch and ATM closures and conversions to help ensure fair treatment of customers. Provide support to the Government as it develops legislation to protect access to cash.

Digital services make it faster than ever to engage in financial services or undertake any financial services activity. Consumers need good information to make good decisions – particularly in a challenging economic environment. But this doesn’t always happen. Instead, they’re often targeted with adverts that are unclear, unfair, misleading or illegally communicated by unauthorised persons.

With increasing use of data and new technology, we’re getting faster at finding potential breaches and shutting down misleading promotions. We will continue to focus on making sure firms promote products and services that are suitable for consumers, stopping firms doing unauthorised business and warning consumers about unauthorised activities and scams.

As our perimeter expands, we will continue our work on non-compliant promotions by authorised firms, as well as activity by unauthorised firms which can lead to mis-selling and financial loss. This will reduce the potential for financial loss from scams and of authorised firms mis-selling high-risk non-standard investments.

Our existing and new activities that support the delivery of enabling customer to help themselves also supports our commitment to reduce and prevent financial crime.

Reduce the potential for consumer financial losses arising from mis-selling of products due to the issuing of non-compliant financial promotions by authorised entities.
Reduce the potential for consumer financial losses and mis-selling of products due to the issuing of illegal financial promotions by unauthorised entities.
Reduce the potential for financial loss from scams and the mis-selling of high-risk non-standard investments involving authorised firms.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Subject to legislation, this year we will introduce an application gateway for firms that want to approve financial promotions for unauthorised firms. The will include information about firms’ ability to approve promotions.
Prepare for our new responsibilities following the extension of the financial promotion perimeter to include promotions of qualifying cryptoassets.
Increase our technological capability to search across social media platforms to continue to identify illegal financial promotions faster and in larger volumes. Work with agencies and ‘finfluencers’ to educate them about their obligations when promoting financial services.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Continue to use new and innovative channels to equip less experienced investors with ways to assess and manage risk. Our campaign will help them to make well-informed decisions and avoid unaffordable risk.
Intervene quickly and assertively against authorised firms issuing non-compliant financial promotions and against unauthorised firms conducting activity that could lead to mis-selling and financial losses.
Continue to proactively supervise new rule changes when they come into place and take action where we find non-compliance.
Continue work with social media platforms and online search engines to ensure they improve the way they identify and remove illegal content.
The FCA and Ofcom will continue to work together to create a shared understanding of where platforms have obligations under the Online Safety Bill and financial promotions legislation.

Trust and consumer protection from misleading marketing and disclosure around ESG-related products.
High-quality climate and wider sustainability-related disclosures to support accurate market pricing, helping consumers and market participants choose sustainable investments and drive fair value.
Active investor stewardship that positively influences companies’ sustainability strategies, supporting a market-led transition to a more sustainable future.

How we will achieve the outcomes

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
We will consult on changes to our Listing Rules to reference the final ISSB standards once IOSCO has endorsed these and they can be used in the UK. This will continue to strengthen the quality of sustainability-related disclosures.
We will provide a Feedback Statement to the , incentives and competence, including planned next steps.
We will finalise and publish the rules on Sustainability Disclosure Requirements and investment labels, and begin the implementation process. This will strengthen consumer protection and trust in the markets for ESG-related investment products.
We will publish our own net-zero transition plan so that we demonstrate high-quality, transparent disclosure.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Embed ESG considerations across our functions, from how we authorise and supervise firms, to how we use our enforcement and competition tools, to help deliver our desired outcomes. This will help us to better monitor firms and identify where their practices do not meet our expectations, so that we can intervene quickly and take appropriate action.
Actively monitor how effectively firms and listed companies are implementing climate-related financial disclosures. Our ongoing work on sustainability disclosure requirements and investment labels, as well as leading the ongoing development of an effective ESG ecosystem, will support integrity in the markets for ESG-labelled securities and help ensure consumers have the right information to make informed choices about the ESG credentials of firms.
Deliver thought-leadership internationally, eg through our role as co-chair of the IOSCO Sustainable Finance Taskforce’s workstream on issuers’ sustainability disclosures.
Continue our work with industry and regulators to drive improvements in Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) transparency, and to strengthen investor stewardship through active engagement and exercise of voting rights to support a market-led transition to a more sustainable future.

Operational disruptions can prevent consumers accessing essential financial services, disrupt markets and threaten confidence in the sector. Firms continue to face a high, and growing, level of cyber threats and operational resilience risks, against a complex geopolitical backdrop. Firms should be investing in their resilience given the increasing scale and complexity of both current and future threats.

We’re scaling up our efforts to deal with firms who can’t meet our new standards on operational resilience, and making it clearer how they should report incidents to us. We are also developing new rules to address the systemic risk that critical third parties present to firms and markets.

Important business services that firms provide are resilient to operational disruption.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Assess how operationally resilient firms are to remaining within their impact tolerances – the maximum tolerable amount of disruption to an important business service – ahead of the 31 March 2025 deadline in our operational resilience policy ( ). After this point, all relevant firms will need to show they can remain within these tolerances.
Make it clearer to firms how they should report operational incidents to us, including what, when and how they should be reporting. This will improve our understanding of the risk landscape and firm resilience, and strengthen our ability to respond to harm in the sector. We will work with the Transforming Data Collection Programme (TDC) to identify and design different options for reporting incidents which we intend to include in a Consultation Paper which we’ll publish in Q4 2023.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24

Assess how operationally resilient firms are to remaining within their impact tolerances – the maximum tolerable amount of disruption to an important business service – ahead of the 31 March 2025 deadline in our operational resilience policy ( ). After this point, all relevant firms will need to show they can remain within these tolerances.

Make it clearer to firms how they should report operational incidents to us, including what, when and how they should be reporting. This will improve our understanding of the risk landscape and firm resilience, and strengthen our ability to respond to harm in the sector. We will work with the Transforming Data Collection Programme (TDC) to identify and design different options for reporting incidents which we intend to include in a Consultation Paper which we’ll publish in Q4 2023.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Continue, with the Bank of England, Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Treasury, our work on Critical Third Parties (CTPs) to address systemic resilience risks. Following the publication of our in 2022, in 2023 we intend to publish a Consultation Paper on an oversight regime for the supervisory authorities to set resilience standards, a testing approach and enforcement powers for CTPs.

Focus 3: Promoting competition and positive change

We want to use competition as a force for good. We will support UK growth and innovation that serves our society, underpinned by widely recognised and respected high standards.

We continue to be a world leader in innovation. For example, we have supported 133 crypto-related firms through our Innovation services, split across 57 in the Regulatory Sandbox and 76 in Innovation Pathways.

Regarding authorised firms, we have enabled 300 newly authorised or high growth firms to receive greater oversight and support through our Early and high growth oversight function, helping raise standards and promote competition.

We have made three commitments to promote competition and positive change. This section explains our actions to maintain our high standards to enable innovation and competition in consumers’ interests.

Implementing the outcomes of the Future Regulatory Framework (FRF) Review is an important change programme for us.

Together with the Treasury and the other regulatory authorities, we will take the opportunity to move to a model where independent regulators are responsible for firm-facing requirements operating within a framework set by Government and Parliament. We will use the new responsibilities in the Financial Services and Markets Bill to progress the orderly replacement of retained EU law with requirements in our Handbook, tailoring provisions as appropriate to better suit UK markets.

In taking forward this work, we will support changes that advance our operational objectives and our new secondary international competitiveness and growth objective. This will help ensure that the UK maintains its position as a preeminent financial centre, and that our standards continue to support access to UK markets while supporting economic growth in the wider economy. This includes taking forward the outcomes from the Wholesale Markets Review (WMR), which amends various parts of the MiFID framework, and Lord Hill’s Listing Review to implement a new regime for admissions to trading and public offers.

As we gain new responsibilities from the FRF Review, it is important to be transparent and accountable for how we deliver these. We will work with Parliament in its scrutiny of our work and focus on embedding the enhanced accountability mechanisms and our new secondary objective in the way we work.

We are making an additional investment in this priority in 2023/24, which will be particularly focused on delivering this transfer exercise in line with the Government’s implementation plan announcement in December 2022.

This commitment supports all our top-line outcomes and creates confidence in financial markets.
Ensuring orderly replacement of firm-facing requirements in legislation in our Handbook.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Prepare for the orderly replacement of further sets of firm-facing provisions in retained EU law with requirements in our Handbook.
Further work to implement the changes to our objectives, regulatory principles and accountability arrangements agreed by Parliament. We will:

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
The orderly replacement of initial sets of firm-facing provisions in retained EU law with requirements in our Handbook. We will work with the Treasury, other regulators, industry, consumer groups and wider stakeholders on the programme outline announced in the Government’s Edinburgh reforms.
Implement the changes to our objectives, regulatory principles, and accountability arrangements.

The regulatory framework is clear, well-understood and trusted by all market participants. Market participants regard the regulatory framework as proportionate both in terms of speed and cost. The framework supports market participants in determining fair value.
Where outcomes are not being met, this is clearly communicated, and remediation is swiftly undertaken or enforced.
The UK is regarded by market participants as one of the top markets of choice, with innovation viewed as encouraged and supported and regulation viewed as appropriately evolving to address new opportunities and risks.
Taken together, our interventions contribute toward sustainable growth in the UK economy.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
Under the new Future Regulatory Framework, we will be focussing on transferring the prioritised files alongside making the identified policy changes.
We therefore expect to bring forward proposals for changes involving MiFID/MiFIR (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive/Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation), Prospectus Regulation – including a new public offer regime, Securitisation Regulation and Short Selling Regulation.
We will also bring forward proposals on asset management regulation.
We will be seeking industry input throughout this process to ensure that we align any changes with the proposed secondary international competitiveness and growth objective.
We will work with the Bank of England to support the Treasury’s objective of having the Financial Market Infrastructure Sandbox to test the use of Distributed Ledger Technology for settlement and trading up and running by the end of 2023.
We will support industry work on digitalisation and T+1 settlement to further support efficiency and innovation in this market.
We will consider how and where we should enable retail access to capital markets and act where appropriate. We will undertake this work alongside work on disclosure and advice.
The additional funding made available to this strategic commitment will be primarily focussed on strengthening our capability and capacity through people, technology and data to predict and react to market events and developments to make us more responsive to heightened market volatility and events in global markets.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
Through 2021/22, we set out an ambitious set of policy reforms with two headline projects, Wholesale Market Review and Primary Market Effectiveness. These are multi-year projects with many interrelated strands. We expect to continue to consult and deliver on these projects through 2023/24. This will include:
Continue to use Supervisory Portfolio Letters, Market Watch and Primary Market Bulletins to clarify our expectations to markets and use our supervisory and enforcement power to drive those outcomes where needed.
Continue to work within international groups to provide thought leadership on international standard setting eg through our recent appointment as Co-Chair of the IOSCO Financial Stability Engagement Group (FSEG). Our work will also include a range of key issues such as sustainable finance, cryptoassets and non-bank financial intermediation.
Continue improving how we authorise firms and approve people. We will operate assertively and robustly to protect consumers and the integrity of markets but also recognise the importance of an efficient application process and the competitiveness of the wider UK economy. This includes increasing capacity and capability, digitising our forms, including data enrichment and validation, and improving our case management system. We will also increase our communications and engagement with industry to improve their understanding of our expectations, as well as the use of our early and high growth oversight to inform our work across Authorisations and Supervision.

The digitalisation of financial services is changing how consumers make decisions and markets operate. Technology in financial services is constantly evolving. In May 2022 our Financial Lives survey found that 88% of UK adults had used online or mobile banking for day-to-day banking activities in the previous 12 months and 11% had an active current account with a digital bank.

To be an effective regulator, we need to better understand the risks and opportunities to capture the considerable benefits to consumers and manage the significant harms. The emergence of Fin Techs and the expansion of Big Tech firms into financial services is also changing the landscape. For example, there are over seven million users of open banking in the UK. Using the transition into open finance, we can proactively shape these digital markets and drive economic growth through our innovation services and developing our regulatory approach to enable safe, inclusive and beneficial innovation for consumers.

In this second year, we will build on our work partnering with other regulators and will focus on how to support consumers to make good decisions in a digital world.

The development of digital markets and the use of new technologies in financial products and services leads to fair value for consumers.
The consumer journey for digital financial products and services enables consumers to take decisions in their best interest.

Key activities we will start in 2023/24
We will continue the significant range of activities that we started in 2022/23.

Key activities we will continue during 2023/24
We continue to work with the Government and stakeholders on the new pro-competition regime for digital markets.
We will publish a Feedback Statement to our on Big Tech as part of our proactive work to identify the competition risks and benefits from Big Tech firms’ entry and expansion into retail financial services. This will help us develop an effective competition approach for Big Tech firms in UK financial services that is aligned with the wider competition and regulatory landscape in the UK and internationally. We want to ensure we harness the benefits to consumers while reducing the key harms. Our work on Big Tech entry is helping us to support the development of digital markets.
As a member of the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) we continue to strengthen our engagement with other UK regulators to drive greater regulatory cooperation on digital issues and coherent approaches to regulation for the benefit of people and businesses online. The DRCF 2023/24 workplan will outline our shared priorities for the coming year across the DRCF’s threefold goals; to promote coherence, to work collaboratively on areas of common interest and to build the necessary capabilities for digital regulation.
We will publish a Feedback Statement to our on artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services. This discussion will support the development of our regulatory approach to AI.
We will continue to investigate digital consumer journeys across priority areas to ensure consumers are empowered to take decisions in their best interest. This includes the extent and nature of harms relating to sludge, dark patterns and gamification of financial services through analysis of large-scale data and experiments. For example, we may look further at the design features of trading apps and how these interact with consumer decision making
Along with the Treasury, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and the Payment Systems Regulator, we will continue to progress our work through the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee on the future of UK Open Banking. This includes publishing views and recommendations on the future entity, an activity roadmap in H1 2023 and overseeing the implementation of the new entity. We will also publish a summary of the Open Finance sprint that took place late 2022 and continue to support Government in their smart data proposals, including by considering how the future framework for Open Banking could be scalable for future data sharing options.

Our annual budget reflects the cost of the resources we need to carry out our work in 2023/24. The key elements of our budget are:

the cost of our core operating activities (our Ongoing Regulatory Activity, ORA), the largest element of which is our people. We increasingly manage resources in a flexible and agile approach to enable us to address issues as they arise eg Russia/Ukraine war, cost of living
the total amount we charge the industry to fund our activities (our Annual Funding Requirement)
capital expenditure to develop our technology and information systems, and new regulatory and operational requirements

We give additional detail in our annual fees rates consultation paper .

£m	2023/24	Actual 2022/23	Change	% Change
ORA budget	664.4	617.4	47.0	7.6%
Scope change	3.7	10.4	(6.7)	(64.4%)
Future Regulatory Framework	12.7	0.0	12.7	-
Consumer Duty	5.3	0.0	5.3	-
Transformation Programme	5.0	10.0	(5.0)	(50.0%)
Consumer Harm Campaign	2.3	2.3	0.0	0.0%
Minimum Fee Adjustment	(9.1)	(9.1)	0.0	0.0%
Adjustment for Appointed Representatives	(0.1)	(0.1)	0.0	0.0%

Our AFR for 2023/24 is £684.2m, an increase of 8.5%. Our AFR includes our ORA budget, Future Regulatory Framework, Transformation, our Consumer Harm Campaign, and the costs we need to recover for changes to our regulated activities ie scope change which includes increased responsibilities for the FCA. The actual fees we collect will reflect the AFR net of rebates from financial penalties collected (forecast at £50.3m).

The ORA budget will help us target resources towards the commitments set out in this business plan and continue to accelerate delivery of our ambitious three-year strategy. The budget comprises a below real terms increase with the base ORA budget increasing by 8.0% (£49.1m). This takes account of cost and demand pressures and ensures we can continue to protect consumers from harm, ensure market integrity and foster innovation. It also includes additional charges to reflect changes to responsibilities for Pre-Paid Funeral Plans (£1.0m), and a reduction in the employer rate of National Insurance (£3.1m). This gives a rebased ORA budget of £664.4m, representing an overall 7.6% increase on last year.

The Government is adapting the UK’s framework for financial services regulation, following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The Future Regulatory Framework (FRF) will transfer some rulemaking responsibilities to the FCA and strengthen accountability, scrutiny and transparency. Implementing the FRF reforms is a key part of our ‘Preparing financial services for the future’ strategic commitment and to support this programme we expect to invest £12.7m in 2023/24.

The Consumer Duty will set higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services and require firms to act to deliver good outcomes for customers. We will invest £5.3m to ensure the Consumer Duty is embedded effectively.

Our Transformation focus in 2023/24 will be ensuring that we continue strengthening our processes that lead to improved speed and efficiency of our actions. We will recover at a lower level than 2022/23 and previous years to fund integration of our key change initiatives across divisions as well as enhancements to our Enforcement processes.

In 2020/21 we sought industry support to undertake a communications and information campaign to tackle areas where we see real risk of consumer harm, building on and supplementing our existing campaign, ScamSmart. We see positive benefits for the entire market from these campaigns. We continue to recover the costs of our InvestSmart Campaign at the same level as 2022/23.

In 2023/24 we will recover scope change costs for financial promotions, pre-paid funeral plans, Consumer Duty, cryptoasset Businesses and Pensions Dashboard. The scope change costs are aligned to where the FCA is required to extend the perimeter of its ongoing regulatory activities (ORA).

Our capital expenditure budget reflects the ongoing delivery of IT systems and infrastructure development and refresh. The increase in expenditure is driven by investment in external facing systems and internal technology platforms. Capital expenditure is largely funded through the ORA depreciation charge.

£m	2023/24	2022/23
IT systems development and infrastructure	58.0	50.0
Property, plant and equipment	6.1	6.2

Enter a Search Term

2020 competition, the 2020 rbpc was the first virtual edition of the competition.

2020 was the 20th year of the competition with 520+ startup teams from around the world submitting applications for 42 slots. More than 180 corporate and private sponsors and close to 200 judges: local and national angel investors, venture capitalists, corporate venture reps, sector specialists participated virtually from around the world. After 3 days, the competition concluded with $1.3+ Million in prize money awarded and pledged with 7 teams each winning $100,000 or more.

The connections and the networking that you can get after the RBPC can literally change your startup's life. Robert Hatcher, 2020 Grand Prize Winner Founder, Aurign

Congratulations to the 2020 Winners

2020 elevator pitch competition.

The Mercury Fund Elevator Pitch Competition is a fast-paced, high-energy event. Each competitor has to pitch their startup in 60 seconds for a chance at prizes. This is a great opportunity for our judges to a get a glimpse at all of the startups and kicks off the competition.

2020 Finals

After the elevator pitches and semi-finals, 7 startups moved on to the live finals!

2020 Competitors

	School	Video Pitch
	MIT
	University of Maryland
	University of Iowa
	University of Maryland, Baltimore County
	Georgia State University
	University of Chicago
	Duke University
	Northwestern University
	Tufts University
	University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
	Oklahoma State University
	Ohio University
	University of California, San Diego
	University of Connecticut
	George Washington University
	Rice University
	Harvard University
	West Virginia University
	Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (India)
	Georgetown University
	Carnegie Mellon University
	University of Waterloo (Canada)
	University of Virginia
	Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)
	Texas State University
	Dartmouth College
	University of Pittsburgh
	Northwestern University
	Norwegian University of Science and Technology
	Georgetown University
	University of Tennessee
	University of Manchester (UK)
	RWTH Aachen University (Germany)
	Johns Hopkins University
	Stanford University
	University of Louisville
	University of Texas at Arlington
	University of Michigan
	University of California San Diego
	Imperial College London
	Yale University
	Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)

	School	Live Plan	Video Pitch
	University of Cambridge (United Kingdom
	MIT
	University of Washington
	Johns Hopkins University
	University of Chicago
	Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
	University of Chicago and Northwestern University
	University of Michigan
	Harvard University and MIT
	Columbia University
	Arizona State University
	University of Houston
	Carnegie Mellon University
	University of Notre Dame
	University of Michigan
	University of California, Irvine
	Arizona State University
	Boston University
	Brown University
	University of Pittsburgh
	Princeton University
	University of Victoria (Canada)
	Cornell University
	Rice University
	UCLA
	IIT Madras (India)
	Texas State University
	Dartmouth College
	Northwestern University
	RWTH Aachen University (Germany)
	Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
	University of Notre Dame
	University of California, Berkeley
	Northwestern University
	University of Iowa
	New York University
	Carnegie Mellon University
	Johns Hopkins University
	UCLA
	University of Arkansas at Little Rock
	Mitchell Hamline School of Law
	MIT

Read About All the Startups

Previous competitions.

For 21 years the Rice Business Plan Competition has provided student startups with mentorship, guidance and capital to help support them on their entrepreneurial journey! In 2020, the competition went virtual for the first time. Check out a few of our previous competitions' content, including elevator pitch videos, final pitches, photos and LivePlans.

2021 Competition - Big Ideas. Brilliant Startups.
2019 Competition - The Art of Entrepreneurship
2018 Competition - One Wild Ride

How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Determined female African-American entrepreneur scaling a mountain while wearing a large backpack. Represents the journey to starting and growing a business and needi

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated July 29, 2024

Download Now: Free Business Plan Template →

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated.

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan .

You understand that planning helps you:

Raise money
Grow strategically
Keep your business on the right track

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow.

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals.

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business.

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create.

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

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What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan.

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

A summary of the problem you are solving
A description of your product or service
An overview of your target market
A brief description of your team
A summary of your financials
Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service.

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business.

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market.

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.”

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market.

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers.

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service.

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics.

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement .

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning.

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy .

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services.

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer.

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process.

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like.

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

Supply chain management
Manufacturing processes
Equipment and technology
Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains.

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

A description of each task
The proposed due date
Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap.

Possible milestones might be:

Website launch date
Store or office opening date
First significant sales
Break even date
Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

Conversion rates
Customer acquisition costs
Profit per customer
Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality.

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before?

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

Sole proprietor
Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided?

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter.

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast.

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business.

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

Company logo
Business name
Value proposition (optional)
Business plan title
Completion and/or update date
Address and contact information
Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity.

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers.

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project.

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure.

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it.

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template.

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses.

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples .

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started.

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality.
Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas.

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

Did you meet your sales goals?
Is spending following your budget?
Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets.

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees.

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

Write a brief executive summary
Describe your products and services.
Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
Outline your organizational structure and management team.
Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
Failing to establish a sound business model.
Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

How will your business make money?
Is there a need for your product or service?
Who are your customers?
How are you different from the competition?
How will you reach your customers?
How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

Use AI to help write your plan
Common planning mistakes
Manage with your business plan

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Garden centre operator Dobbies digs up plan for rent cuts

Dobbies, which is owned by the US investor Ares Management, is working with FTI Partners on proposals which will pave the way for store closures and rent reductions, Sky News learns.

City editor @MarkKleinmanSky

Thursday 29 August 2024 12:41, UK

Dobbies Garden Centre in Milton Keynes, Pic: Reuters

One of Britain's biggest garden centre operators is plotting a far-reaching financial overhaul which could pave the way for store closures and steep rent cuts.

Sky News has learnt that Dobbies Garden Centres, which is controlled by the major American investor Ares Management, is working with advisers on a restructuring plan - a contentious mechanism which enables its sponsor to impose financial haircuts on its creditors.

City sources said FTI Consulting had been drafted in to work on the restructuring.

A formal court process such as a restructuring plan is typically used by retailers as a way to close underperforming stores and impose rent haircuts on landlords.

It was unclear on Thursday how many of its 77 sites Dobbies planned to close or the potential impact on its 3,700-strong workforce.

If the proposals are not approved by creditors, an insolvency process of some kind is likely.

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

The preparation of a restructuring plan comes 18 months after Ares took control through a separate reorganisation of its debt.

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More From Forbes

How can we tackle the uk’s productivity challenge.

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Daniel Pell, vice president and country manager, U.K. and Ireland, Workday .

Productivity growth in the U.K. has faltered for nearly 15 years. Since 2010, GDP growth per hour worked has risen by a yearly average of 0.5% , lower than the figures for the U.S., France and Germany, and well below the U.K. figures recorded for the previous 13 years.

We recently released a new research report into the causes and possible cures for this malaise, noting the enormous potential for AI to add extra productivity to U.K. enterprises. But rather than retread what’s in the report, this article will dig a little deeper into some of the reasons productivity is lower than it could be and what companies are doing to address the issue. Unless otherwise stated, all of the statistics below are drawn from the report.

Productivity Is Personal

It’s worth starting with people’s motivations to be more productive. Note that increasing productivity isn’t the same as making people work harder: Entirely different changes like better tools, streamlined processes and upskilling can all raise productivity, and may actually make work easier. We asked employees and business leaders at large U.K. enterprises what motivates them to be more productive.

The top answer was different for employees and leaders. For employees, wage growth came first, whether through salary increases, bonuses or promotion. Business leaders put this third, with job satisfaction being the top answer (wage growth came third for this group). It’s salutary for leaders to reflect that most employees put their personal well-being first. Only 19% of employees said contribution to their company’s growth was an important motivator. If productivity is to be increased, then that success needs to be shared with the workforce to some extent. When productivity is rewarded, personal and organizational aims become aligned: it’s a win-win.

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Both groups put work-life balance as their second highest motivation for increased productivity. This, again, deserves consideration. Few of us actively want to feel very stressed, skip lunch or miss spending time with our loved ones. For most people, being productive means tasks and targets can be achieved calmly within normal working hours and leisure time fully enjoyed. Finding ways to increase focus, reduce friction and eliminate unnecessary tasks is the smartest path to increased productivity without making people unhappy.

Barriers To Productivity

Next, we asked about what people thought were the main obstacles to increased productivity. Several answers received high rankings from both employees and leaders. And it’s worth noting that while there are several common causes, the reasons for missing productivity will be somewhat different for every company and that probably more than one issue is involved.

The leading answers were a lack of engagement, alongside a lack of incentives to be productive, both agreed by 41% of employees. Engagement is a measure of the sense of involvement and enthusiasm felt for the organization’s endeavors. The two reasons are linked, of course: Many employees don’t feel they have a reason to be more productive, whether that’s through financial incentives, personal growth or the sense of a shared mission.

This chimes with the results of Gallup’s Global Workplace report , which this year found that only 23% of employees feel actively engaged at work. This is a complex and troubling trend that deserves attention from every leader, and every government. People need to feel invested, involved and valued, that they share in success, take responsibility, feel fulfilled and are properly rewarded for their work. Going back to our point about employees putting personal well-being first, meaningful bonus systems for all employees that reflect their contribution to commercial goals make even more sense.

Inadequate technology was cited by 35% of employees and 28% of leaders as a barrier to improved productivity. A great deal of enterprise software is not fit for purpose, onerous to use and generates more work than it helps get done. Fortunately, unlike cultural or structural issues, it’s an obstacle that can be eliminated without much difficulty by investing in modern, better connected, streamlined systems.

The fourth most popular reason given for low productivity was simply “too many meetings,” cited by 34% of employees and 36% of leaders. This has been a well-observed trend for many years and, as others have noted, has a number of viable solutions.

Meetings that have no measurable objectives shouldn’t happen, and technological alternatives to meetings are well established. Leaders should ensure meetings are focused on concrete outcomes, rather than general catch-ups and status updates, and reduce the numbers attending to those able to make a specific contribution. Very often meetings become a habit, rather than a necessity.

Poor collaboration was also cited as a significant contributing factor to productivity losses, but again, we already have many ways to improve communication and collaboration which aren’t meetings.

Finally, we asked what measures companies were already taking to improve productivity. The leading answer was investment in technology, which 52% of leaders say is happening at their company. This is heartening to discover for a technology solutions provider, but it was also encouraging to find that 39% of leaders are actively working on measures to improve workplace engagement and culture which, as we have noted, appears to be the most common cause of lost productivity. A similar number (38%) are increasing investment in upskilling existing employees, an essential requirement given the pace of technological change.

Unfortunately, only 20% of leaders and just 13% of employees say their organizations are working to reduce the number of meetings, despite them being a genuine barrier to getting work done for more than a third of all our survey respondents.

The causes of low productivity are varied. The changes made by one company to boost outputs against costs may have no effect whatsoever on another. What we’d encourage is a productivity audit for your own organization. Once you understand the particular chemistry of the company, then it becomes possible to create change, tackling quick wins first—better tools, perhaps eliminating a few meetings—but also forming a plan for more intangible barriers, such as engagement.

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Postal Service Overhaul Runs Into Challenges

Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, defended the 10-year plan to stabilize the agency’s finances, although he acknowledged that officials had faced initial challenges.

The U.S. Postal Service is trying to shore up its finances, but its 10-year modernization plan is running into challenges. Credit... Video by Kendrick Brinson

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By Madeleine Ngo

Reporting from Washington

Aug. 29, 2024

More than three years ago, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a sweeping 10-year plan meant to steer the organization out of a financial crisis. The plan, which included consolidating locations, raising prices and lengthening promised delivery times, was meant to stabilize an agency that had lost $87 billion over the past 14 years.

That effort has run into major obstacles. Early attempts to modernize the delivery network temporarily led to worse service in areas like Atlanta and Richmond, Va., where the agency has rolled out new regional processing and distribution centers.

The Postal Service’s long-term financial viability also remains in doubt. Revenue is up , but expenses have climbed, in large part because inflation has surged in recent years and driven up labor expenses. The agency has also called for administrative action that would adjust its pension costs, which has not occurred. At the same time, the Postal Service is grappling with declining mail volume .

In early 2021, Postal Service management initially projected that it would break even by fiscal year 2023. Instead, the agency, which is supposed to be self-sustaining, lost $6.5 billion that year and is projected to lose an additional $6.3 billion this fiscal year.

Lawmakers have pushed back on the changes, in part because of complaints about mail service in their districts. In May, a bipartisan group of 26 lawmakers sent a letter to the agency’s leaders expressing concern about the decline in on-time delivery in regions where there have been major changes. The lawmakers also called on the agency to pause changes to its processing network until its regulator fully studied their potential impact.

In response, Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, said the agency would pause some of the changes until January and move forward with others that were underway.

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Kroger and Albertsons defend merger plan in federal court against US regulators’ objections

Faye Guenther, president of local UFCW 3000, hugs Carol McMillian, bakery manager at Kroger-owned King Soopers and member of Local 7, after a news conference about the Kroger and Albertsons merger outside the federal courthouse on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

A grocery cart rests in a cart return area with a sign for Albertsons grocery store in the background on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Lake Oswego, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

FILE - A customer exits a Kroger fueling center on June 26, 2019 in Flowood, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Kim Cordova, president of UFCW 7, center, speaks to reporters after a news conference about the Kroger and Albertsons merger outside the federal courthouse before a hearing on the merger on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Portland, Ore.(AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Carol McMillian, bakery manager at Kroger-owned King Soopers and member of Local 7, speaks about the Kroger and Albertsons merger during a news conference outside the federal courthouse before a hearing on the merger on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

People line up outside the federal courthouse before a Kroger and Albertsons merger hearing on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Portland, Ore. The two companies proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in October 2022. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

A worker returns grocery carts at an Albertsons grocery store on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Lake Oswego, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Supermarket chain Albertsons told a federal judge Monday that it might have to lay off workers, close stores and even exit some markets if its planned merger with Kroger isn’t allowed to proceed.

The two companies proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in October 2022. But the Federal Trade Commission sued to prevent the $24.6 billion deal, alleging it would eliminate competition and raise grocery prices in a time of already high food price inflation .

In the three-week hearing that opened Monday, the FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction that would block the merger while its complaint goes before an in-house administrative law judge.

“This lawsuit is part of an effort aimed at helping Americans feed their families,” the FTC’s chief trial counsel, Susan Musser, said in her opening arguments on Monday.

Musser said Kroger and Albertsons currently compete in 22 states, closely matching each other on price, quality, private label products and services like store pickup. Shoppers benefit from that competition, she said, and will lose those benefits if the merger is allowed to proceed.

Customers also are wary of the merger, the lawyer said. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, for example, 278 shoppers wrote to the FTC to express their concerns about a combined Kroger and Albertsons, which would own five of the city’s eight supermarkets.

But Kroger and Albertsons insist the FTC’s objections don’t take into account the rising competition in the grocery sector. Walmart’s grocery sales totaled $247 billion last year compared to $63 billion in 2003, for example; Costco’s sales have grown more than 400% in the same period.

“Consumers are blurring the line of where they buy groceries,” Albertsons attorney Enu Mainigi said.

Mainigi said Albertsons’ customers now spend 88 cents of every dollar at competitors that range from Aldi and Trader Joe’s to Dollar General. Albertsons can’t compete with larger rivals that have national scale, but joining forces with Kroger would help it do that, she said.

Kroger attorney Matthew Wolf also defended the proposed merger.

“The savings that come from the merger are obvious and intuitive. Kroger may have the best price on Pepsi. Albertsons may have the best price on Coke. Put them together, they have the best price on both,” Wolf said.

The two sides also disagree on Kroger and Albertsons’ plan to sell 579 stores in places where their stores overlap. The buyer would be C&S Wholesale Grocers , a New Hampshire-based supplier to independent supermarkets that also owns the Grand Union and Piggly Wiggly store brands.

The FTC says C&S is ill-prepared to take on those stores. Laura Hall, the FTC’s senior trial counsel, cited internal documents that indicated C&S executives were skeptical about the quality of the stores they would get and may want the option to sell or close them.

But Wolf said C&S has the experience and infrastructure to run the divested stores and would be the eighth-largest supermarket company in the U.S., if the merger plan goes through.

The commission also alleges that workers’ wages and benefits would decline if Kroger and Albertsons no longer compete with each other.

Before the hearing, several members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland to speak out against the proposed deal.

“Enough is enough,” said Carol McMillian, a bakery manager at a Kroger-owned grocery store in Colorado. “We can no longer stand by and allow corporate greed that puts profit before people. Our workers, our communities and our customers deserve better.”

The labor union also expressed concern that potential store closures could create so-called food and pharmacy “deserts” for consumers.

For people in many communities across the U.S., when a grocery store shutters, “their only source of food actually is walking to the nearest gas station,” said Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, which represents over 23,000 members in Colorado and Wyoming.

Mainigi argued the deal could actually bolster union jobs, since many of Kroger’s and Albertsons’ competitors, like Walmart or Costco, have few unionized workers.

U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson is expected to hear from around 40 witnesses, including the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons, before deciding whether to issue the preliminary injunction. If she does decide to temporarily block the merger, the FTC’s in-house hearings are scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

But Nelson’s decision will seal the merger’s fate, according to Wolf. He said the FTC’s in-house administrative process is so long and cumbersome that merger deals almost always fall apart before it’s through. Earlier this month, Kroger sued the FTC, alleging the agency’s internal proceedings were unconstitutional and saying it wants the merger’s merits decided in federal court.

The attorneys general of Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming all joined the case on the FTC’s side. Washington and Colorado filed separate cases in state courts seeking to block the merger.

Kroger , based in Cincinnati, Ohio, operates 2,800 stores in 35 states, including brands like Ralphs , Smith’s and Harris Teeter. Albertsons , based in Boise, Idaho, operates 2,273 stores in 34 states, including brands like Safeway, Jewel Osco and Shaw’s. Together, the companies employ around 710,000 people.

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