The latest update from the British Business Bank for you;
The British Business Bank has reached the landmark milestone of £350m of lending to the financial services and insurance sectors as part of its ENABLE Guarantees programme. More than £100m of that total was provided over the last financial year.
A total of 57 smaller businesses in the financial services and insurance sector have benefitted from lending through the ENABLE Guarantee programme. The increased availability of finance reaching these smaller businesses, that may not otherwise have done so, ultimately supports them to invest, grow and create jobs in the UK.
This comes as the British Business Bank has reached a major milestone, delivering £5bn in lending through its structured guarantee programmes, comprising ENABLE Guarantee and ENABLE Build. Of this total, over £3bn has been directed to businesses outside London and the South East, with around £500m provided to each of the North West, East Midlands, and East of England, supporting regional growth and access to finance.
Since 2017, the Bank’s structured guarantee programme have encouraged both bank and non-bank lenders to expand lending to UK smaller businesses. They provide a government-backed guarantee on portfolios of new or existing small business loans, helping reduce lender risk.
Financial services and insurance received the fourth highest level of support across all sectors benefiting from the structured guarantee programmes, underlining their importance to the UK economy. Other notable sectors include the construction and housing sector, for which lending through the programmes has surpassed the £2.3bn mark, including c.£1.2bn under ENABLE Build, while over £800m has been provided to the wholesale and retail sector since FY 2017/18.
The programmes are open to a wide range of UK and foreign lenders that are active in the UK market.
Together, these initiatives support the British Business Bank’s mission to promote sustainable growth by improving access to finance for smaller businesses across the UK.
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, said: “Our work with the British Business Bank is one of many levers we are pulling to go further and faster in our mission to deliver economic growth for the entire country and put more money in people’s pockets.
“This £5bn lending milestone is our Plan for Change in action, with the programmes delivering much-needed investment to areas outside London and the South East.”
Michael Strevens, Managing Director, Structured Financial Institutions, British Business Bank said: “It’s incredibly rewarding to reflect on the volume of lending to smaller and medium-sized businesses we’ve helped support over the years. Our focus has always been on evolving our support to strengthen UK businesses, and it’s encouraging to see those efforts bearing fruit. The UK is a global leader in the financial services and insurance sector, and £350m of lending underlines that it is a thriving industry, playing a critical role in economic growth.”
Ravi Anand, Managing Director of ThinCats, a delivery partner and alternative finance provider across all sectors, said: “The British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantees programme has been a huge contribution to the £1bn of funding we have undertaken post COVID. The scheme ‘does what it says on the tin’— enabling senior bank appetite to allow ThinCats to fund growth initiatives of UK mid-sized SMEs and in turn enabling a positive contribution to UK GDP”.
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