Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved Conister for accreditation to the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), and Bank of Ireland (UK) for accreditation under the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS).

Conister will join the other 26 BBLS lenders who have been accredited since the scheme opened.

The new CLBILS lenders will be able to provide finance to midsized and larger UK businesses with a group turnover of more than £45m (the upper limit for the existing smaller-business focused CBILS) that are suffering disruption to their cashflow due to lost or deferred revenues during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Following their approval, the lenders will put in place the operations required to start lending under the schemes and will confirm the dates from which they will be ready to start receiving applications from businesses across the UK.

Government published statistics show over 1.2 million businesses have to date[1] benefitted from loans and guarantees worth £52.7 billion through schemes delivered by the British Business Bank. This includes 1,174,854 Bounce Back Loans worth over £35.5 billion, 60,409 facilities worth almost £13.7 billion through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and 516 facilities worth £3.5 billion through the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

The Bank continues to review applications from a wide range of lender types – from PRA-regulated banks, to platform lenders, debt funds, invoice finance lenders, asset finance lenders and responsible finance lenders.