The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) today publishes progress updates for Pool E recipients, providing a summary of performance against their public commitments to the period 28^th February 2021.

The public commitment updates this reporting period indicate that most of those awarded are now making significant progress in their deliverables. A small number are facing challenges due to the pandemic and in particular the knock-on impact of CBILS/BBLS. BCR is currently holding review meetings with all awardees and a number have submitted updated business cases which is permitted under the CIF Agreement and subject to approval by the BCR Board. Awardees public commitments made can be found here.  

Aidene Walsh, CIF Executive Director, said: “Over the last quarter, we have seen awardees advance their relationships with FinTechs, build market share and deliver a number of new functionalities and firsts in the market that will enable them to provide meaningful competition to UK SMEs. Those awardees that are struggling to deliver on their business cases have been very transparent in their public commitments and BCR is currently working with them to understand what this means in terms of their CIF funding recognising that there needs to be a keen focus on creating options for SMEs in the near term.”

A summary of performance against awardees public commitments can be found in the notes to editors, with links to the full updates provided below:

Pool E second quarter update

•       Virgin Money UK PLC public commitment progress update

•       ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update

•       Ebury Partners Limited public commitment progress update

•       MarketFinance Limited public commitment progress update

•       Funding Xchange Ltd public commitment progress update

•       Codat Limited public commitment progress update

•       ezbob Ltd public commitment progress update

•       Fractal Labs Ltd public commitment progress update

•       Previse Ltd public commitment progress update

The next progress updates for Pool E awardees will be in July 2021. Pool A, B, C and D awardees will provide their next reporting update in May 2021. As part of BCR’s role in monitoring the way that organisations are using the funds, BCR holds awardees to account on their progress against business plans which includes meeting all the recipients. For more details on how BCR monitors CIF awardees see here.

Pool F: new funding round under the CIF scheme

BCR has £5m CIF funding available (referred to as ‘Pool F’) for distribution under the CIF scheme to support A, B and C eligible bodies in providing competition in financial services to UK SMEs. BCR is required to consult with potential applicants on the size of awards, with the consultation process due to run in August 2021. The BCR website has been updated with further details and timings, which can be found here.