Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved four new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) - The Co-operative Bank, Cynergy Bank, OakNorth Bank and Starling Bank.

Following their approval, each lender will be putting in place the operations required to start lending under the scheme and will confirm shortly the dates from which they will be ready to start receiving CBILS applications from smaller businesses across the UK.

COVID-19, the current global crisis is affecting individuals and businesses equally. Isolation and selective lockdown of the economy are helping in containing the pandemic, but it is leaving a lasting impact on businesses. Most of the businesses moved to abrupt remote work without prior planning, which is affecting their sales, employee retention, production, and marketing. Once this pandemic subsides businesses will face a plethora of changes.

SoFi, the online personal finance company, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Galileo Financial Technologies (“Galileo”), the powerful financial services API and payments platform.

QuantaVerse, the only company to offer an end-to-end financial crime platform that uses AI and machine learning to automate the majority of the AML investigation process, has announced new enhancements to its AI Financial Crime Platform.

 CryptoCompare is pleased to announce that the MVIS CryptoCompare Institutional Bitcoin Index has been licensed to 3iQ Corp for The Bitcoin Fund (Ticker: QBTC.u on the Toronto Stock Exchange). The exchange listing will take place on Thursday, April 9th.

The MVIS CryptoCompare Institutional Bitcoin Index is a rules-based index, intended to give investors a means of tracking the performance of Bitcoin on selected top tier exchanges. These exchanges include Binance, Bitflyer, Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit and Kraken.

In order to further develop its platform and achieve further growth, Oneplanetcrowd has attracted funding from the European Investment Fund (EIF) via the EU’s Employment and Social Innovation Programme Capacity Building Investments window. The financing comes in the form of a favourable loan with a term of eight years. The required equity has been strengthened as all shareholders have converted their outstanding (convertible) loans into shares and existing crowd investors have bought additional certificates of shares from Oneplanetcrowd.

 KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, revealed the results of its Q1 2020 top-clicked phishing report.

Starling, the digital bank, has been accredited by the British Business Bank as a lender under the government-backed Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). This will enable it to provide term loans between £5k and £250k to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are struggling financially as a result of the coronavirus emergency. Starling will shortly confirm the date from which it will be ready to start receiving CBILS applications.