Bank Overdraft Limit Too Small? Top Up, Add a Facility or Refinance
Business Owners Hub
Overdraft Limit · Top Up or Refinance · Second Facility
The overdraft was approved. The number is just wrong for the business you run now. Three routes exist, and at two named bank products a limit increase is not one of them.
Also called: overdraft limit increase, overdraft top-up, business overdraft variation, extending a business overdraft.
| Which of these is you right now | What actually decides it | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| A payment is due this week and the limit will not cover it | Nothing in the credit market reliably moves inside a week. The payment can be moved, and that is the lever with a date on it | The payment is due this week |
| The account is already above the approved limit | Two charges are running, and the account is simultaneously the evidence for any application you are about to lodge | Already over the limit |
| The limit runs out every month, not just this one | A sizing problem rather than a timing one, so the first question is whether the product you hold permits an increase at all | What actually moves a limit |
| The bank has already said no to the increase | Whether the no was a product rule, a read of account conduct, or an exposure ceiling. Only one of the three is worth re-arguing | The bank said no |
How to use this. The routes are not ranked and they are not exclusive. Most people arrive on the first two rows and read the rest afterwards. General information only, not financial advice.
Why won't the bank lift a limit when the business has clearly grown?
Because the limit was sized on how the account behaved at the last assessment, not on what the business turns over now. The number in front of you is not a judgement the bank is making about your business today. It is a fossil of the business as the file described it the last time somebody looked, and until something triggers a fresh look, nothing about it moves.
Three sizing methods do most of the work, and they behave differently. The turnover multiple takes a share of trading receipts over a set window and lands on a limit from that, which means a facility sized in a quiet quarter stays sized for a quiet quarter. The cashflow gap method looks instead at the distance between when money leaves and when it arrives, and sizes the facility to bridge it. A business that has grown by winning larger customers on longer terms has usually widened the gap far faster than it has grown the receipts, which is exactly why the limit can feel wrong while the revenue line looks excellent. The third is the borrowing base, which sizes the facility against the assets standing behind it, most often the debtor ledger, and it is the one that explains why two businesses with identical revenue can be offered very different numbers.
Sitting on top of both is conduct, and conduct is what the reassessment actually reads. Days in debit, the share of the limit in use across the period, dishonours, and any drawing above the approved limit all carry weight, and they carry it whether or not the trading behind them was healthy. This is the part borrowers consistently underestimate: the account is the evidence, and it is being read as evidence whether or not anyone told you so. How an assessor works through it line by line is set out in the lender read of your bank statements.
The last piece is vintage. Banks do not re-open a facility continuously; they review it on a cycle, and the prudential framework they operate under expects ongoing monitoring of individual exposures rather than a one-off assessment. That is why a business can double in size and see nothing change on the facility for the better part of a year. The limit is not refusing to move. Nobody has been asked to move it, and on some products, as the next section sets out, nobody can.
How is a business overdraft limit actually worked out?
By one of three methods, plus a conduct overlay that can pull the answer down from any of them. Knowing which method your bank is using is what turns a request into an argument, because each one has a different input and each one moves for a different reason. The table below is the method, not the number: no figure appears in it, because the multiple, the window and the advance rate all vary by lender and are set at the time of application.
| Method | What it measures | What makes the number move | Where the input comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turnover multiple | A share of trading receipts across a set window | Receipts through the trading account across that window, not invoiced revenue and not what the accounts say | Your own bank statements for the period the lender chooses |
| Cashflow gap | The distance between money going out and money coming in | Customer payment terms, supplier terms, and how long stock or work in progress sits before it converts | Aged debtors and aged creditors, read together rather than separately |
| Borrowing base | The value of the assets standing behind the facility, most often the debtor ledger | The size and quality of the ledger: concentration in one customer, how much is past due, and which debtors the lender will count at all | The aged debtors report, which is why a clean ledger is worth more than a good story |
| Conduct overlay | Not a method on its own. It caps whatever the three above produce | Days in debit, utilisation across the period, dishonours, and any drawing above the approved limit | The same statements, read as behaviour rather than as arithmetic |
Basis and as-of. A structural description of the methods used in the Australian market, current at 2 September 2026. No multiple, percentage, advance rate or window length appears above, because those vary by lender, change over time and are set at the time of application. Which method applies to your facility is a question for your lender or your broker. General information only, not a quote and not an offer.
The practical use of this is narrow and worth doing. Work out which method produced the number you already have, then work out what that same method would produce on today's figures. If the two are far apart, you have an argument. If they are not, the limit is not the problem and the next section matters more than this one.
What actually moves an overdraft limit, and what does nothing?
Three things move a limit: a reassessment with better conduct behind it, a product that permits an increase, and an application that reaches the person who can approve one. Everything else is noise. The first of those has a natural moment, which is the annual facility review, and preparing for that review is a different job from this one: it is covered end to end in the sixty day plan for an overdraft facility review, and this page does not repeat it.
What this page owns is the harder finding, and it is the one almost nothing on the open web says out loud. On some products a limit increase is not available at any price. That is a product-level fact, not a credit outcome, and the distinction matters enormously. A credit outcome can be argued with better evidence. A product rule cannot be argued with at all, and every hour spent building a better case for an increase that the product does not offer is an hour the business does not have. Two of the six positions in the table below are published as no.
Entity structure sets a ceiling too, and it is a quiet one. The same trading history presented under a sole trader ABN and under a single director company does not always reach the same limit at the same lender, which is set out in the sole trader and ABN overdraft guide. And nothing at all is moved by the two things borrowers most often reach for: a strong revenue year that the account does not show, and a verbal explanation of a period the statements already recorded.
| Lender and product | Increase on an existing facility | Variation, or a fresh application | The published condition | Source, read 2 September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NAB QuickBiz Overdraft | No | Neither. It cannot attach to an existing NAB business overdraft at all | "only available as a new facility" and "can't be applied to existing NAB Business overdrafts". After establishment, no additional facility or limit increase "for the next 12 months" | NAB QuickBiz Overdraft eligibility criteria |
| AMP Business Overdraft | No | Neither. No increase path is offered on the existing facility | "We do not currently offer Business Overdraft limit increases", with limits assessed at the time you apply | AMP Bank overdraft help pages |
| ANZ GoBiz | Yes | A fresh application through the online channel, assessed against the published borrowing bands | "you may use GoBiz to apply for a limit increase on your current ANZ unsecured overdraft", subject to stated ceilings across that bank's business overdrafts and everything applied for through the channel, with lower ceilings in the first year of trading | ANZ unsecured business overdrafts |
| CommBank Business Overdraft | Yes | A bank-side variation on the facility you hold, not a self-service change | Route is a Relationship Manager, a message in the bank's app, or a business banker by phone or in branch. The bank will "work with you to set a realistic overdraft limit or help you find other product options suitable for your business needs" | CommBank support, changing a business overdraft limit |
| Westpac and St.George Commercial Overdraft | Yes | An application either way, priced as a new limit or as a top-up of the existing one | Both publish an establishment fee waiver on eligible new and top-up overdrafts, quoted as up to $1,500 on a new limit of $250,000 or $750 on a top-up of $250,000, for applications received and approved to 30 September 2026, and expressly not available on applications submitted through brokers or other third parties | Westpac business overdraft and St.George commercial overdraft |
| Non-bank market, published settings | Rarely on your existing facility | A fresh application at the new lender, for a second facility rather than an increase | A non-bank cannot increase a limit it did not write, so the offer is a facility alongside yours. An existing cashflow facility is commonly disqualifying on this side of the market, and where it is not, the second lender's position behind the incumbent's registered security drives both appetite and price | Structural description of published non-bank settings, not a single lender's statement |
Basis and as-of. Every position above was read on the named lender's own published page on 2 September 2026, and the wording in the condition column is that lender's, not ours. Product rules and offers change without notice, the fee waiver in the fifth row is published as ending 30 September 2026 and is expressly unavailable on broker submitted applications, and none of this is a statement about what any lender will do on your file. Confirm the current position with the lender or through a broker before acting on it. General information only.
Can I have two overdrafts?
Often yes, and the thing that decides it is usually not the register: it is what your existing facility documents already say you may and may not do. Two facilities are common enough. What stops one is either a promise you have already given the incumbent, or the position a second lender would take behind it, and those are two separate gates in that order.
Does your existing facility already stop you?
Very often, yes, and it is written into documents you already hold rather than anything on a public register. Most business facility agreements carry restrictions on what the borrower may do while the facility is on foot, and two of them decide this question before a second lender is ever approached.
The first is a negative pledge, which is an undertaking not to grant security over the company's assets to anyone else without the existing lender's consent. The second is broader and catches people who assume they have avoided the problem: a restriction on further indebtedness, which can limit taking on additional debt at all, secured or not. That second one matters because the obvious workaround, an unsecured second facility, does not clear a restriction written against borrowing rather than against security.
Two practical points follow, and both are the opposite of how this usually gets handled. The gate is consent, not registration. Where a restriction applies, the question is whether the incumbent will agree, which is a conversation to have early rather than a form to lodge late. And a breach is not a commercial inconvenience: these undertakings sit in the facility terms, so breaching one is capable of being an event of default on the facility you already have, which is a considerably worse outcome than not getting the second one.
So the first document to read is your own facility letter and the general terms it attaches, not the register. What those clauses say, and whether a particular arrangement would breach them, is a question for your solicitor rather than for a broker or for this page.
Where would a second lender actually rank?
In almost every case the incumbent has registered a general security agreement over the company's assets on the Personal Property Securities Register. That registration is not a claim over a particular machine or a particular debtor; it is a blanket position across the lot. When a second lender registers afterwards, the default rule is chronological: as the register's own guidance puts it, where there is more than one perfected interest the priority order runs from earliest registration to latest, with the exceptions set out in the Personal Property Securities Act 2009. The second lender is behind, and being behind is the whole conversation. Two registrations over the same assets are competing security interests, which is the phrase the register itself uses.
Second ranking security is simply a registered interest sitting behind an existing one over the same assets. If things go wrong, the first ranking lender is paid out before anything reaches the second. That does not make the lending impossible. It makes it more expensive and narrows who will do it, which shows up as appetite and pricing rather than as a yes or a no.
A deed of priority is the instrument that changes the picture. It is an agreement between the secured lenders, signed by them and by the borrower, setting out whose security ranks first over the same assets and up to what amount. Some lenders and their solicitors call the same instrument an intercreditor deed, and the two terms are used interchangeably in the Australian market. On a business already banking with a major, getting one signed is very often the practical gate on a second lender coming in behind, and it is the step that takes the time nobody budgeted for. The mechanics of arranging one without repricing the senior facility are set out in subordinating working capital without repricing the senior debt, and this page deliberately sends you there rather than turning into a legal explainer.
Two further things decide the answer in practice. The first is aggregate exposure: both lenders look at total debt across the business, not just their own slice, so a second facility can be declined on total gearing while each facility on its own looks fine. The second is blunter, and it catches people out: on the non-bank side an existing cashflow facility is commonly disqualifying by itself, before anyone reaches the security question. It is also worth knowing what the second facility usually is in practice. Where one runs alongside a bank overdraft it is most often invoice finance or debtor finance, because those are written against the debtor ledger rather than against the whole balance sheet, which is a narrower ask of the incumbent than a second blanket registration. Guarantees and registration in a second-lender scenario are covered further in the unsecured business overdraft guide.
| The question | The incumbent bank | A second lender coming in behind |
|---|---|---|
| Registered security | A general security agreement on the Personal Property Securities Register, usually over all present and after-acquired property | Registers afterwards, and is behind by default on registration date alone |
| Ranking in a recovery | First ranking by date of registration, unless a deed says otherwise | Paid second, which is priced into the facility rather than waived |
| Guarantees | Director guarantees, often unlimited, taken when the facility was written | Will usually want its own, from the same people, over the same personal position |
| What it assesses | Total exposure across every facility you hold with them, not just the overdraft | Aggregate exposure across both lenders, so a second facility can fail on total gearing while each one looks fine alone |
| The practical gate | Under no obligation to sign a deed of priority, and any real property security taken at the time sits outside the register entirely | Often needs that deed before it can proceed, and is frequently ruled out at the front door by an existing cashflow facility |
Basis and as-of. Structural descriptions of how security priority works in the Australian market, current at 2 September 2026. Not a statement about any lender's position on your file, and not legal advice. Security priority is a matter for your solicitor. General information only.
Do I have to tell the new lender about the bank facility?
Yes, and doing it on day one is worth more than it costs, because every route to finding out anyway is already open to them. The registered security is on a public register. The facility shows in the statements they are about to read. The holding cost shows in the account. A second lender that discovers an undisclosed facility mid-assessment stops assessing the business and starts assessing the disclosure, and that is a much harder file to recover.
Two things are being assessed here rather than one. The first is serviceability across everything, because the new lender is testing whether the business can carry the total commitment, not just the facility in front of them. The second is what else is on the register, since undisclosed registrations change the ranking question the moment they surface. Disclosing both, with the facility letters attached rather than described, is the same move as naming the receipt that closes the gap: it removes the assessor's need to assume.
When does a top-up beat a refinance, and when does it not?
A top-up beats a refinance whenever the product allows one and the shortfall is a sizing problem rather than a structure problem. It loses the moment the product does not permit an increase, the security will not stretch, or the facility you hold is the wrong shape for what the business now does.
That last point is the one worth pausing on. A business whose gap has moved from a few weeks to a few months has often outgrown the overdraft as a product, not just as a number, and the honest answer is a differently shaped facility rather than a larger version of the same one. Where the line sits between the two is set out in the overdraft versus line of credit comparison, the glossary entry for a line of credit covers the structural difference in a paragraph, and the business line of credit page sets out how that facility is actually written.
Four things decide it, and they decide it in this order: whether the product allows an increase at all, how many weeks you actually have, what the security position looks like once a second registration is in the picture, and what you give up by leaving the bank facility in place. The table sets each route against all four, including the route most comparison pages leave out.
| Route | What has to be true before it is even possible | Realistic time to money | What it costs you to hold | What it does to the bank relationship | When it is the wrong move |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top-up on the existing bank facility | The product allows an increase at all, the account conduct at the last review supports it, and the security already held covers the higher limit | Normally the quickest of the three, because the bank already holds the file and the security | One line fee, recalculated on the larger approved limit | Unchanged, and the strongest of the four for the relationship | When the product does not permit an increase, or when the conduct that sized the limit has not changed |
| Second facility alongside, non-bank | The incumbent bank's registered security can be worked around or ranked, and the existing facility is disclosed | As long as the statement set and the security position take to resolve, which is the variable nobody controls | Two facilities, so two holding costs on two approved limits | Unchanged on paper, though the incumbent may be asked to sign a priority arrangement | When the incumbent will not consider any priority arrangement and the second lender needs one |
| Full refinance away from the bank | The whole facility can be replaced, including any linked transaction banking, and the discharge can be timed | The slowest of the three, because it re-does the assessment and the discharge together | One facility again, at whatever the new lender's structure costs | It ends, and with it any pricing or history built on the relationship | When you need money inside a dated cycle, because the discharge alone can outlast the window |
| Do nothing and manage inside the limit | The shortfall is one cycle, small, and you can see the receipt that closes it | Immediate, because there is nothing to approve | Nothing beyond the facility you already hold | Improves it, because a clean cycle is exactly what the next reassessment reads | When the shortfall repeats, because a facility short every month is a sizing problem, not a timing one |
Basis and as-of. The routes above are structural descriptions of how each option works, current at 2 September 2026. No timing in the table is a commitment, no row is a recommendation, and which route is open to you depends on your lender's product rules, your security position and your circumstances at the time of application. General information only, not financial advice.
The fourth row is not filler. If the shortfall is one cycle, small, and you can name the receipt that closes it, doing nothing is sometimes the right answer, and a clean cycle is precisely what the next reassessment will read. A page that never says so is selling rather than advising.
Why do I have two overdraft fees?
Because a line fee is charged on the whole approved limit whether you draw it or not, so a second facility means paying to hold two ceilings rather than one. That is the entire mechanic, and it is the part that surprises people who expected the second facility to cost something only when it was used.
The increment is what this section is about, and only the increment. A revolving facility is priced on availability: the lender has committed to have the money there, and the line fee is what that commitment costs, calculated against the approved limit rather than the balance. Add a second facility and you have two commitments running, each with its own ceiling and its own holding cost, even in a month where you touch neither. A flat annual facility fee behaves differently on exactly the same basis, because it does not scale with the limit at all, which changes the arithmetic when the second facility is small relative to the first.
How holding cost behaves when a second facility is added
Structures only, current at 2 September 2026. No rate, fee amount or holding cost figure appears above, because those vary by lender, change over time and are set at the time of application. The full rate market, the fee taxonomy and the holding cost arithmetic are set out in the overdraft rates and fees guide. General information only, not a quote and not an offer.
Two practical consequences follow. The first is that a second facility sized to the worst month costs you in all eleven other months, so sizing it to the actual gap rather than to the fear is a real saving. The second is that the comparison you want is not fee against fee but total holding cost against the cost of the shortfall, and that arithmetic belongs to the rates and fees guide, which is where this section stops.
What do I do first if the overdraft will not cover next month?
Work backwards from the date, not forwards from the options. The first move is to fix the size of the shortfall and the day it bites, because that single number decides which routes are still open and quietly closes the others before you have wasted a week on them.
Then sequence against it. If the shortfall lands inside a few weeks, a full refinance is almost certainly out, since the discharge alone can outlast the window, and the live choices are a top-up on a product that permits one or a second facility. Whichever it is, the thing that has to be lodged this week rather than next is the complete statement set: every trading account for the full period, not the tidy ones, plus the existing facility letters and anything showing the receipt that closes the gap. Incomplete statement sets are the single most common reason a file that would have been approved is not approved in time. What actually drives speed on the fast routes is set out in the fast and same day overdraft guide, and the document set itself is laid out in the evidence pack for a cashflow facility.
There is also a stop-doing list, and it matters more than it sounds. Anything that lands on the account in the next three weeks will be read by an assessor in the next three weeks. Drawings above the limit, dishonoured direct debits and a sudden change in how payments are timed all read badly at exactly the moment you need them to read well, and the mechanics of excess drawings and what they cost are set out in the business overdraft guide as well as below.
The payment is due this week and the limit will not cover it
Deal with the payment before you deal with the facility, because almost nothing in the credit market moves reliably inside a week and the payment itself often can. This is the part most pages skip, and it is the part that decides whether the week goes badly.
Start by separating the two problems. The facility question is whether the limit is the right size for the business, and that is a question with a horizon of weeks. The payment question is whether one specific transfer clears on one specific day, and it has levers that nobody has to approve. The customer whose receipt closes the gap can often be asked to pay early, or to part-pay against the invoice, and the answer arrives in an afternoon rather than a fortnight. A supplier will almost always deal better with a call before the payment fails than with a dishonour afterwards, and a scheduled direct debit can usually be moved by agreement rather than left to bounce. If any part of the shortfall is a tax obligation, the Australian Taxation Office publishes its own payment plan pathway, and that is arranged with the office directly rather than through any lender.
One consequence of leaving a tax debt alone is worth knowing before you decide, because it is the part that reaches the next finance application. The Australian Taxation Office publishes criteria under which a business tax debt may be reported to a credit reporting bureau, along with the notice a business receives before that happens. What a future lender sees is that disclosure rather than the debt itself, which is why the debt being addressed matters more to a file than the debt being small. The criteria, the exclusions and the notice process are set out on the office's own site and should be read there rather than taken from any summary, including this one.
One boundary matters here and it is not a broking question. Which obligations you meet, and in what order, is a directors' duties question rather than a funding one. Obligations such as superannuation and withheld employee tax carry consequences that can reach directors personally, which is exactly why that conversation belongs with your accountant or solicitor before it belongs with anyone arranging a facility. No page, including this one, should be ranking your creditors for you.
Then, and only then, run the facility route in parallel. A top-up on a product that permits one is the fastest of the three routes, so if the product allows it, that goes in now rather than after the payment date has passed. And keep the account clean while it is being assessed, because the fortnight in which you are asking for more room is the fortnight the assessor is reading.
What happens if the account is already over the limit?
The account will usually let the payment through and then charge you for it, and the charge has two parts rather than one. Neither part is the bank agreeing to a higher limit, which is the distinction that trips people up.
The first part is interest on the amount above the approved limit, commonly calculated daily on the excess and running until the excess is repaid, at a rate above the facility rate. The second part is the line fee, which on some published business finance terms is charged against the approved limit plus the amount by which it has been exceeded, so the holding cost moves with the excess rather than staying fixed at the approved number. Both are product mechanics set out in the terms you signed, and both are why an excess is more expensive than it looks on the statement.
No Australian lender publishes a standard window for clearing an excess. You will see specific numbers of days quoted for this in search results and in general summaries. Those are not a rule, they are not sourced to published terms, and acting on one as though it were a deadline is a mistake in both directions. What your facility actually says about repayment on demand is in your own facility letter and terms.
The cost that matters most is not the fee. An excess sitting on the account while a limit increase is being assessed is read as conduct by the person assessing it, and it is read at exactly the moment you want the account to read well. That is the reason a payment problem and a facility application should not be solved with the same drawing. Rates, fee taxonomy and the full mechanics live in the overdraft rates and fees guide.
The bank said no to the increase. What now?
A declined increase on a clean file is usually a policy or product answer rather than a credit verdict, and what you do next depends entirely on which of three things the no actually was. Most people never ask, and then spend a week re-arguing the one version that cannot be argued with.
The first version is a product rule, where the facility you hold simply does not offer an increase. Nothing about your business changes that answer, and the table earlier on this page shows that two of six published positions sit here. The second is a read of account conduct or serviceability, which is the only one of the three that a better file and a cleaner cycle can genuinely move, and the annual review is the natural moment to move it. The third is an exposure or security ceiling, where the bank is at its limit on you rather than unconvinced by you, and that one is structural: it is answered by a second facility or a different lender, not by more evidence.
Two things follow. A decline on an increase does not close the second facility route, because a different lender is answering a different question against a different balance sheet position. And re-lodging the same request through the same channel within days changes nothing except the number of enquiries on the file. If the reason you were given was about your credit file rather than the facility, that is a different problem with a different fix and it is covered in the declined and bad credit overdraft guide. If the reason was about the shape of the facility rather than the size of it, the honest next step is a line of credit rather than a larger overdraft, and the difference between them is set out in the overdraft versus line of credit comparison.
From our broking, indicative
Across files where a second facility is lodged alongside an existing bank overdraft, the pattern we see is consistent even though the clock is not. Where the statement set is complete on day one and the incumbent's security does not need to be touched, these run at the fast end of whatever the lender's published turnaround is. Where a deed of priority has to be negotiated with the incumbent, the timeline stops being the second lender's to control, and that single step is the most common reason a file that looked quick was not.
The three things that most often decide the outcome on this specific file type, in the order we see them:
- An incomplete statement set, which is the most common cause of a decline that was not really a credit decline
- An existing cashflow facility that was not disclosed up front, which on the non-bank side is frequently fatal on its own
- A security position the second lender cannot get comfortable with, usually because the incumbent will not consider a priority arrangement
Indicative only, drawn from Switchboard Finance broking files, as at September 2026. This is not a quote, not an offer and not a statement of approval likelihood. Outcomes vary with lender workload, file quality and credit profile, and no timeframe here is a commitment.
Two readers should leave this page here rather than read on. If the problem is not that the limit is too small but that your credit file will not clear an assessment, start at the declined and bad credit overdraft guide instead. If the bank has recalled the facility rather than simply declined to grow it, that is a different situation with a different clock, and it is covered in the recalled facility guide.
How do I show a lender the business outgrew the limit rather than overspent it?
By presenting the drawn balance next to what caused it, in the same document, before the assessor forms a view without it. Growth and deterioration look almost identical on a bank statement. What separates them is not the balance, it is what the balance is standing next to.
The term to know is hardcore debt, because it is the vocabulary a credit note actually uses. Hardcore debt is the part of an overdraft balance that never clears back to credit, no matter how good trading is. A lender watches for it because a revolving facility carrying a permanent floor is term debt in disguise: the facility is being used for something structural while being priced and reviewed as something temporary. Where a lender identifies it, the usual response is to want that portion moved onto a term loan with scheduled principal rather than left sitting inside a limit.
That conversion point is a mechanism, not a verdict. Being asked to term out a hardcore portion is not the same as being told the business is in trouble, and reading it that way is how borrowers talk themselves into defending rather than explaining. The two signals that drive it are utilisation, meaning how much of the limit is in use across the period rather than on any one day, and days in debit, meaning how much of the period the account spent below zero at all. Both are neutral measurements. Both are read alongside whatever else you put in front of them, and the standards of practice banks operate under for small business customers are published in the Banking Code of Practice.
So the work here is presentation, and only presentation. Every mechanism this section touches belongs to something else on this site. The twelve statement patterns that shrink limits are set out in the red flags a lender reads in your bank statements, how an assessor actually works through the file is in the lender read, the document set is in the evidence pack, and the underlying concept of working capital is in the glossary. What this section adds is the framing, which is the part nobody else supplies.
| What the assessor looks at | Reads as outgrowing the facility | Reads as running out of room |
|---|---|---|
| Receipts against the drawn balance | Both rising together, over the same months | Receipts flat or falling while the drawn balance climbs |
| Return to credit | The facility returns to credit at some point in most cycles, even briefly | A permanent floor the balance never clears, in a period where trading was good |
| What the peaks line up with | Named events: a stock purchase, a wages run, a specific large order | Nothing the file explains, so the assessor supplies their own explanation |
| What changed in the business | New customers on longer terms, evidenced by contracts or orders rather than described | Nothing in the file connects the larger balance to larger work |
| Conduct through the period | No dishonours and no drawings above the limit | Dishonours, or drawings above the limit, however briefly |
| Utilisation shape | At or near the ceiling at points in the period | At or near the ceiling every day of the period |
Basis and as-of. A structural description of how utilisation, days in debit and conduct are read on a cashflow facility, current at 2 September 2026. Not a scoring model, not a lender's published criteria, and not a prediction of any outcome on your file. General information only.
The practical version is a single page attached to the application: the drawn balance month by month, the receipts alongside it, and one line per peak naming what caused it. If a hardcore portion exists, say so and propose the term structure yourself rather than waiting to be told. An assessor who has to work out which story they are looking at will usually assume the less favourable one, and that assumption is the thing this page exists to prevent.
The limit is a record of the account at the last assessment, not a verdict on the business today, and that single reframe changes what you do next. If a payment is due this week, treat that as a payment problem with its own levers before it becomes a funding problem, because nothing in the credit market reliably moves inside a week. Before arguing for an increase, find out whether the product you hold permits one at all, because on some it is published as no and no amount of evidence moves it. Where an increase is available, a top-up is normally the fastest route and the kindest to the relationship. Where it is not, the real decision is between a second facility running alongside, which is a security priority question long before it is a credit one, and a full refinance, which is the slowest thing you can do inside a dated cycle.
Key takeaway: find out whether an increase exists as a product before you spend a week arguing for one as a credit decision.Frequently Asked Questions
Sometimes, and on some products the published answer is no. The NAB QuickBiz Overdraft is published as "only available as a new facility" that "can't be applied to existing NAB Business overdrafts", and after establishment no additional QuickBiz facility or limit increase can be applied for "for the next 12 months" (read 2 September 2026). AMP states on its own help pages that "We do not currently offer Business Overdraft limit increases" (read 2 September 2026). The row-by-row position for each product sits in the table under what actually moves a limit, and where an increase is structurally unavailable the real decision is a second facility or a different facility shape rather than a better-argued request.
Usually the account will let the payment through and then charge you for it, which is a different thing from the bank agreeing to a higher limit. Two charges typically run at once: interest on the amount above the limit, commonly calculated daily on the excess until it is repaid and at a higher rate than the facility rate, and a line fee that can be charged against the approved limit plus the amount you have exceeded it by, so the holding cost moves as well. No Australian lender publishes a standard window for clearing an excess, so any specific number of days you see quoted for it is not a rule.
The bigger cost is usually not the fee. An excess sitting on the account while a limit increase is being assessed is read as conduct by the person assessing it. The mechanics are set out under what happens if the account is already over the limit and in the business overdraft guide.
It depends entirely on which route you are on, and the honest answer is a range rather than a date. A top-up on a facility the bank already holds is normally the quickest of the three because the file and the security are already there; a second facility with another lender takes as long as the statement set and the security position take to resolve; a full refinance is the slowest because it re-does the whole assessment and the discharge. The route comparison in the top-up or refinance table sets out what has to be true for each one, and the speed anatomy for a dated cycle is covered in the fast and same day overdraft guide. Nobody can promise a settlement date on any of them, which is why a payment due this week is handled as a payment problem first and a facility problem second.
Yes, and how they read it decides the outcome. A facility that never returns to credit reads as hardcore debt, which is a revolving limit doing the work of a term loan, and an assessor who sees that without an explanation will usually price for deterioration rather than growth. The same statements read very differently when receipts and the drawn balance are both climbing together, which is the presentation problem the lender read of your bank statements sets out in detail.
Not always, and closing it before you have the replacement approved is the version of this that goes wrong. Some lenders will require the existing facility to be repaid and closed at settlement, others are content to sit alongside it, and the answer changes the moment security priority is involved. The sequencing, and the specific risk of closing a facility before the new one is unconditional, is covered in closing a facility before applying for finance.
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