On 6 April 2026, the amount a UK company can raise under the Enterprise Investment Scheme in a single year went from £5m to £10m. The lifetime cap doubled to £24m. The pre-investment gross asset test rose from £15m to £30m. It is the biggest expansion of the scheme in over two decades.

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Read the headline and you would assume raising EIS money just got easier. It didn't. Raising more EIS money got easier — for the companies that can get through the door in the first place.

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The door is advance assurance

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Before most angels will wire, they want HMRC's advance assurance that the shares will qualify. It is the most boring, most load-bearing document in a UK seed round.

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HMRC's figures, published in May 2026, show what is happening at that gate. In 2025 to 2026, HMRC received 3,310 EIS advance assurance applications — up 4% on the year before — and as of March 2026 had approved 72%. On the SEIS side, applications jumped 24% to 4,085, with 76% approved so far. The 2024 to 2025 SEIS cohort finished at 85%.

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Some 2025 to 2026 applications are still being processed, so those rates will move. But the shape is hard to miss: more founders are asking, and a bigger share are sitting in the not-yet-approved pile.

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What actually gets an application knocked back

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Advance assurance is not a pitch. HMRC is not judging whether yours is a good business. It is working through a checklist: qualifying trade, risk-to-capital, gross assets, headcount, company age, and how the money will be spent.

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What sinks applications is rarely ambition. It is an application that cannot evidence its own claims. A vague use of funds. Figures in the application that don't reconcile to the filed accounts. A business plan saying one thing and a financial model saying another.

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The risk-to-capital condition is where most of the judgement sits. It asks two questions: does the company have genuine objectives to grow and develop over the long term, and is there a real risk of loss to the investor? Both are answered by your model, not your deck. If your projections show a smooth, riskless glide to profitability, you have accidentally argued yourself out of the scheme.

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The concentration nobody mentions

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In 2024 to 2025, companies registered in London and the South East took 60% of all EIS investment and 66% of all SEIS investment. Information and Communication alone accounted for 35% of EIS money and 42% of SEIS money.

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If you are a hardware business in Leeds or a services business in Newcastle, you are not only competing for capital. You are competing against a pattern the whole system is calibrated around. That is not a reason to give up. It is a reason to be twice as tight on the parts you control.

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Headroom only helps if you can use it

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The doubled caps are genuinely useful for companies that had hit the old ceiling and thought their EIS route was closed. Worth noting too: EIS income tax relief held at 30% while VCT relief dropped to 20% on the same date, which is likely to push investors toward direct EIS.

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But headroom is only worth something if your compliance position keeps pace with it. Every EIS round adds a compliance statement, a share class and a set of conditions you must keep meeting for three years after the money lands. Companies that raise fast and file slowly find out at exit — the worst possible moment to discover a relief has been withdrawn.

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What ready actually looks like

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It is a short list, and none of it is glamorous. A financial model that ties to your statutory accounts. A use of funds you would happily defend line by line. A cap table that reflects reality, options included. Three years of clean filings. And a straight answer to the question what happens if this doesn't work — because that is the question the risk-to-capital condition is really asking.

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None of that requires a full-time CFO on £120k. All of it requires someone who has done it before, sitting with your numbers for a few days rather than a few minutes.

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Raising in the next six months and not certain your model would survive an advance assurance read-through? Take a free hour with us and we'll pressure-test it before HMRC does — no pitch, no boring numbers. Finance leadership, without the headcount.

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Sources: HMRC, "Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme: 2026," gov.uk ; FounderCatalyst, "What's Changed: EMI and EIS Reforms from 6 April 2026," foundercatalyst.com