The British Business Bank this week announced the Recovery Loan Scheme has passed a significant milestone, with 76 accredited lenders having offered more than £1bn to smaller UK businesses. Of the £1.06 billion of funding offered through 6,190 facilities so far, £822.8m has been drawn down through 5,137 facilities.
The Recovery Loans Scheme launched in April 2021 and is currently scheduled to run until Dec. 31. The scheme supports borrowing of up to £10m for individual businesses and up to £30m across a group, with funds available for any legitimate business purpose, including managing cashflow, growth and investment. It is designed to appeal to businesses that can afford to take out additional finance for these purposes.
“Businesses up and down the country are beginning to look beyond the pandemic towards the opportunities available to them in the recovery,” British Business Bank CEO Catherine Lewis La Torre said. “The British Business Bank is committed to supporting smaller businesses in accessing the finance they need to grow sustainably in the future. In meeting the £1 billion milestone, the Recovery Loan Scheme is demonstrating its impact by helping thousands of companies to fund their further development.”
The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in 2014, its mission is to drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK, and to enable the transition to a net zero economy, by improving access to finance for smaller businesses. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.
The British Business Bank’s core programmes support more than £8.5 billionn of finance to almost 95,000 smaller businesses. It is responsible for running the government’s coronavirus business loan schemes and Future Fund, together responsible for delivering £80.4 billion of finance to 1.67 million businesses. The schemes are now closed to new applications.
As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses. The British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to businesses about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help their application.
In light of the coronavirus pandemic and EU Exit, the Finance Hub has expanded and it now targets a wider business audience. It continues to provide information and support for scale-up, high growth and potential high growth businesses, but now provides increased content, information and products for businesses in survival and recovery mindsets. The Finance Hub has been redesigned and repositioned to reflect this, during this period of economic uncertainty.