• BCR also provides progress updates on Public Commitments from Pool A, B, C and D Capability and Innovation Fund recipients

BCR Annual Report

The directors of BCR have today published the company’s Annual Report for 2020/2021 which includes for the first-time case studies on how some awardees have used funds from the Alternative Remedies Package (ARP) to make significant impact on the provision of financial and related services to SMEs. The annual report can be found here.

Richard Anderson, the BCR Chair, said: “Throughout the life of BCR, we have sought to fund initiatives which will make a real difference to competition in the small business banking market – and it is very positive that we are now starting to see the visible impact of this. There are some fantastic success stories emerging through these public commitments and real evidence that awardees are moving the dial on competition in the small business banking market.”

The annual report is further supplemented by a set of short videos from the majority of awardees describing the impact of the awards on them and their customers. All videos will be made available on the on the BCR website later this week.

Progress updates for Pool A, B, C and D recipients

The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) today also publishes progress updates for Pool A, B, C and D recipients, providing a summary of performance against their public commitments to the period 30^th September 2021.

The updates of those awarded, their original commitments and key achievements to date can be found here.

In this reporting period, BCR approved business cases for Starling which involves an acceleration of spend due to the success of their SME business and for Investec which involves a change in approach in now delivering their BCA offering through a partnership with Monese. Their public commitments are unchanged.

Aidene Walsh, CIF Executive Director, said: “Against the backdrop of recently released information that shows that the number of UK SME businesses now stands at 5.6m^[1], it is a tremendous achievement that two Pool A awardees, namely Starling and ClearBank, have achieved 7.2% and 6.7% (across both pools) market share respectively. This recognises the competitive choice they have both created for UK SMEs. As with previous reporting, indeed many of the awardees are progressing really strongly in their business cases with strong examples particularly in the lending, payments and data management space. There are some emerging concerns about competition for talent in a tight market and potential delays on delivery which the awardees themselves are responding to and which BCR is monitoring closely.”

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 A tenth quarter update

• Starling Bank Limited public commitment progress update
• Metro Bank plc public commitment progress update
• ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update

Pool B ninth quarter update

• Investec Bank plc public commitment progress update
• The Co-operative Bank plc public commitment progress update

Pool C eighth quarter update

• Atom Bank plc public commitment progress update
• The Currency Cloud Group Ltd public commitment progress update
• iwoca Ltd public commitment progress update
• Modulr Finance Limited public commitment progress update

Pool D ninth quarter update

• Codat Limited public commitment progress update
• Fluidly Limited public commitment progress update
• Form3 Ltd public commitment progress update
• Funding Options Limited public commitment progress update
• Swoop Finance Limited public commitment progress update

The next progress updates for Pool A, B, C and D awardees will be in February 2022 which will also include the first progress update for Pool F winners. Pool E awardees will provide their next reporting update in January 2022. 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.