Terms of business

Last updated: 11 October 2026

These are the terms on which Patchlight provides the Patchlight Signals database to your firm. They are written to be read. If anything in them is unclear, ask before you rely on it.

1. Who we are

Patchlight is a trading name of Hu Concepts Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under number 17122898, with its registered office as shown on the Companies House register. "We", "us" and "our" mean Hu Concepts Ltd. "You" and "your firm" mean the business that opens a trial or takes a subscription, and the people it allows to sign in.

By opening a trial, pressing Subscribe, or signing in to the Patchlight Signals platform, your firm agrees to these terms. If you are agreeing on behalf of a firm, you confirm you are entitled to do so.

2. What Patchlight Signals is

Patchlight Signals is a research database. It reads the public Companies House register for owner-managed companies in the areas we cover, identifies the ones whose filings indicate a likely need for finance, and presents each with the filing behind it, our workings, a confidence rating, and, where we hold them, the business contact details of the company's decision-maker. You query it against your own objectives through a login.

It is research and data. It is not advice. We do not give financial, credit, legal or investment advice, we do not arrange finance, and we are not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Nothing in the database is a representation about any company's creditworthiness, its intentions, or its willingness to borrow. A "signal" is our reading of a public filing; you decide what to do with it.

3. Your account and your people

• One subscription covers one firm. A seat is one named person; your plan says how many seats it includes. People at other firms, including introducers, networks and group companies, need their own subscription.
• Sign-in is by a link emailed to the address on the account. Each person must use their own address. You are responsible for everything done under your firm's logins, and for telling us when someone leaves so their seat can be reassigned.
• You must not share a sign-in link, let a person outside your firm use the platform, or access it by any automated means (scripts, crawlers, scrapers, bulk download tools). We record which contacts are opened and what is exported, by whom and when.

4. The free trial

• A trial lasts seven days from the day it opens, needs no card, and closes by itself. One trial per firm.
• A trial has the whole database to look at on capped allowances: a limited number of contact reveals, export rows and firms viewed, which the platform shows you. Answering the profile questions raises the contact allowance; the platform says by how much.
• We may decline or close a trial at any time, including where the address given is not a business address, the firm already has or has had a trial, or the use looks like extraction rather than evaluation.
• These terms, including the licence in section 7, apply to a trial in full.

5. Subscription, price and payment

• A subscription is monthly, paid in advance by card through our payment provider, Stripe. Stripe holds your card details; we never see them. Payment records are kept by Stripe and summarised on your Account page.
• Prices are as shown on patchlight.co.uk and on the Account page when you subscribe. Prices exclude VAT, which is added at the applicable rate where we are required to charge it.
• The founding seat. The first ten firms to subscribe pay the founding price (£150 a month at the date of these terms). That price is held for as long as the subscription continues without a break. If a founding subscription lapses or is cancelled and later restarted, it restarts at the then-current standard price.
• Subscribing during a trial. If you subscribe while a trial is open, the subscription starts and the first payment is taken when the trial ends, not before. The Account page shows the date. Your allowances rise to your plan's levels from the day you subscribe.
• Each further month is charged automatically on the same day of the month until you cancel. If a payment fails, we tell you and retry; if it still fails after fourteen days we may suspend access until it is settled.
• We may change the standard price on thirty days' notice by email. A founding price is not changed while the subscription continues.

6. Cancelling and refunds

• You can cancel at any time from the Account page or by emailing us. Access continues to the end of the month you have paid for and no further payment is taken.
• Three-month promise. If, within three months of your first payment, you decide Patchlight Signals is not for your firm, tell us and we refund every payment you have made. After that, payments are for the month they cover and are not refunded in part.
• Choosing a wider pace ends the promise. Contacts open at up to 60 firms a day. Your account owner may choose instead to open up to 300 a week or 1,200 a month, confirming in the platform that they understand this; from that confirmation the three-month promise no longer applies to the subscription. Everything else in these terms is unchanged.
• A refund does not undo the licence: data already taken from the platform remains subject to section 7, and section 11 says what happens to it when you leave.

7. The licence: what you may do with the data

While your firm has a trial or a subscription, we grant it a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the database and anything you take from it for one purpose: identifying businesses that may need commercial finance and making your firm's own approach to them. Within that purpose you may search, shortlist, watch, open contacts, make notes, export within your allowances, and put what you export into your own systems.

One thing may leave your firm: a client pack. You may give a client pack to the company it is about, and to a lender in the course of placing that company's finance. Nothing else in it may be passed on, and the pack carries your firm's mark.

You may not, and may not let anyone else:

• sell, license, publish, share or pass on the data, in whole or in part, to anyone outside your firm, including introducers, lenders, networks, group companies or data providers, other than a client pack as allowed above;
• use it to build, train, enrich or check another database, list or product;
• extract it in bulk or systematically, by export, copying, screen capture or any automated means, or work around an allowance or a cap;
• remove or alter any marker we place in an export;
• use it for anything other than business-to-business finance approaches, or in any way that breaks the law.

Exports carry a mark that identifies your firm. If data from your account appears where it should not, we will treat it as a breach by your firm unless you show otherwise. We may suspend or end access immediately on a breach of this section, without refund, and the licence ends with it.

8. Data protection: who is responsible for what

• The contact details in the database are business contact details of company officers and senior people, gathered from the public register, the company's own website and public professional profiles. Our privacy notice explains how we process them and how a person is removed on request.
• For the data we supply, we are an independent controller. For your firm's use of it, including every approach you make and every record you keep, your firm is an independent controller. You are responsible for your own compliance with UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, for having a lawful basis for each approach, for honouring opt-outs, and for your own privacy notice.
• Before cold-calling a number, screen it against the Telephone Preference Service and the Corporate Telephone Preference Service as the law requires. Some companies in the database are sole traders or partnerships, to whom the rules for individuals apply; treat them accordingly.
• If anyone asks you to stop contacting them, or asks where you got their details, stop, tell them Patchlight, and tell us within five working days so we can remove them from everything we deliver.
• We never sell or pass on anything about your firm, your searches, your notes or your approaches. What you do in the platform is used only to run it and to keep it safe.

9. Accuracy and what we promise

• The database is built from public filings, which companies make late, inaccurately and on their own timetable, and from contact sources that change. We work to keep it current and correct, but we supply it as it is, and we do not promise that any row is accurate, complete or up to date.
• Every derived figure (a maturity window, a working-capital position, a revenue estimate) is shown with its workings and a confidence rating. An inference, such as a bridging loan's exit being due, is stated as an inference and never as a fact. Check what matters before you rely on it.
• Tell us when something is wrong and we will correct it. Your correction is kept and is never overwritten by a reload.
• We aim to keep the platform available at all times and tell you about planned maintenance, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We add areas, firms and features over time and may change or withdraw a feature; if a change materially reduces what your subscription gives you, you may cancel under section 6 and we refund the unused part of the month.

10. Ownership

The database, its structure, its workings, its presentation and the platform are ours, protected by copyright and database right. Your firm gets the licence in section 7 and nothing more. Your notes, lists and profile answers are yours; we hold them to run your account and delete them when you ask.

11. Ending the agreement

• You may end it at any time by cancelling (section 6). We may end it on thirty days' notice for any reason, refunding any unused part of the month, or immediately for a breach of section 7 or non-payment.
• When it ends, your logins close and the licence ends. You may keep a record of the approaches your firm has already made and continue those conversations. You must stop using, and delete, every other export and extract within thirty days, and confirm in writing that you have if we ask.
• Sections 7, 8, 10, 12 and 13 continue after the agreement ends.

12. Liability

• Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot be limited by law.
• Subject to that, we are not liable for any loss of business, profit, revenue, opportunity or goodwill, for any decision made or approach taken in reliance on the database, or for any indirect or consequential loss.
• Subject to that, our total liability to your firm under or in connection with this agreement in any twelve months is limited to the fees your firm paid us in those twelve months.
• Your firm will meet any loss we suffer from a breach of section 7 or section 8 by your firm or its people.

13. General

• We may update these terms. We give thirty days' notice by email of any change that affects you; continuing to use the platform after that date is acceptance. The current version is always at patchlight.co.uk/terms.
• Notices to us go to scott@patchlight.co.uk; notices to you go to the owner's address on your account.
• These terms are the whole agreement between us about Patchlight Signals and replace anything said or written before them. Neither side relies on anything not in them, except that nothing excludes liability for fraud.
• If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stands. A delay in enforcing a term is not a waiver of it. Neither side may transfer this agreement without the other's consent, except that we may transfer it to a successor to our business on notice to you.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.