Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved six new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), three new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) and two new lenders for accreditation to the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS).

New CBILS lenders 365 Business Finance, FOLK2FOLK, Handelsbanken, LendingCrowd, Maxxia, and Nucleus Commercial Finance will be able to provide financial support to smaller businesses across the UK that are losing revenue and seeing their cashflow disrupted, as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.

New CLBILS lenders Close Brothers, ThinCats and HSBC Bank plc, a separate entity from the previously-accredited HSBC UK, 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.

Coutts and Arbuthnot Latham will join the other 21 BBLS lenders who have been accredited since the scheme opened.

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 applications from smaller businesses across the UK.

Keith Morgan, CEO, British Business Bank, said: “Our accredited lenders continue to see high levels of demand for Covid-19 business loan schemes. Accrediting these additional finance providers means further support for smaller business customers and continues the British Business Bank’s long-term objective to offer more diverse sources of finance to smaller businesses.”

Government published statistics show more than one million businesses have to date^[1] benefitted from over £42 billion in loans and guarantees through schemes delivered by the British Business Bank. This includes 967,321 Bounce Back Loans worth £29.5 billion, 52,275 loans worth over £11 billion through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and £2.3 billion through the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

The accelerated accreditation process the British Business Bank has put in place for the coronavirus loan schemes means it has been able to more than double the number of CBILS lenders since the scheme’s launch, increasing the number from 41 to 99.

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.