British Business Bank is supporting more than £12.4bn of finance through its core programs and meets its objectives, but “reports a loss for 2022/23 due to falls in market valuations.”
Louis Taylor, CEO, British Business Bank, said:
“The British Business Bank has continued to build momentum in 2022/23, making a total of £1.6bn of commitments despite the challenging economic environment. As reported in our 2022/23 Annual Report and Accounts, there has been an expected drop in valuations across our portfolio, producing a £135.3m loss this year. Given the longer-term 10-year horizon for most of our investments we would expect an overall upward trajectory despite these in-year fluctuations.”
As noted in the update:
“After the pandemic, we have re-focused on the UK’s future economic growth as we deliver against our new strategic objectives from 2023/24. These are: driving sustainable growth, backing innovation, unlocking potential, and building the modern, green economy. We will continue to put our customers at the heart of everything we do, investing through the cycle to support the UK’s smaller businesses as they start up and grow.”
Performance against 2022/23 Key Performance Indicators
The Bank’s performance against its measured objectives in the last financial year was as follows:
- Increasing the supply of finance to smaller businesses – The stock of finance supported through the Bank’s core finance programmes was £12.4bn at the end of March 2023, supporting more than 90,000 businesses, significantly exceeding its £10.7bn target.
- Helping create a more diverse finance market for smaller businesses – The Bank continued to deploy the vast majority of finance in its core finance schemes outside of the largest UK banks, exceeding the target set. 99% of the Bank’s finance was provided outside the ‘Big Five’ banks, against a 97% target.
- Identifying and helping to reduce regional imbalances in access to finance – The Bank met its target for deployment of finance across the UK’s Nations and regions, deploying £1.27bn of finance outside of London.
- Being the centre of expertise on smaller business finance in the UK, providing advice and support to the Government – The Bank was assessed to have met its objective in deploying its expertise to the government effectively informed by delivery against six performance indicators.
- Achieving its other objectives while managing taxpayers’ money efficiently – The Bank achieved an adjusted return of 6.5%, significantly exceeding its target of 1.3%.
- Supporting the UK’s transition to a net zero economy – the Bank met its key milestones in delivery of an initial portfolio alignment strategy, an emissions baseline for its own operations, and an initial delivery plan to target net zero in its own operations.