AskIf launches AskIf Funding, a lender accredited under the British Business Bank’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme

About AskIf

Despite small businesses having such a major impact upon local economies, job creation and social mobility across the UK, the sector faces an annual funding gap of between £2 billion ^{Read footnote text 1}  and circa £9 billion ^{Read footnote text 2} . Having left Barclays after a successful 19 year career, Samantha Bamert was asked to advise the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Task Group for Responsible Credit and Savings.  It was during this work that Sam found she could no longer ignore the socially damaging market failure resulting from the lack of funding for small businesses. Having looked for solutions across the Fintech space, it became clear there remained a huge market gap, so she set about creating Ask Inclusive Finance to tackle the problem head on.https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/news/archbishops-task-group-publishes-final-report

AskIf’s approach is ambitious and holistic. Its aim is to transform the finance ecosystem serving small and micro businesses, thereby removing the funding gap and unleashing the potential these enterprises have to boost economic growth and trigger social improvement.

AskIf’s inclusive, tech-enabled platform is unique in combining the three crucial elements required to bring about the change and scalability needed to achieve its objectives – skilled people to support borrowers and make smart lending decisions, the latest tech to embed robustness, efficiency and thorough data analytics designed for this under-served segment of the market. The changes AskIf will deliver will open the sector to commercial funding sources, enabling capital to be deployed at scale and the funding gap removed.

AskIf accepts loan applications either through its website or via its network of partners (referral partners, brokers and full-service delivery partners).  Each borrower is also assigned a lending manager.

AskIf’s cloud-based platform puts each application through its matching algorithms to connect the borrower with the right partner and lending manager to support their application. AskIf’s workflow engine then controls the process and flow of information, ensuring continuity and transparency for the borrower.

Complementing human touch engagement with the borrower, the platform then embeds efficiency through the provision of automated tools that include; automated bank statements, a credit assessment engine, integrated credit bureau data; automated loan and collateral documentation, loan management functionality; reporting and analytics.  This enables AskIf to assess all loan applications for their creditworthiness and affordability for the borrower.

The gathering of users across a common platform that is underpinned by data consistency and a common risk framework allows for aggregation, enabling scaled capital deployment by institutional funders.

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

The British Business Bank programmes are supporting more than £7.2bn of finance to over 93,000 smaller businesses (as at end of September 2019).

As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses:

• The new British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to high-growth businesses about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success. The new site also features case studies and learnings from real businesses to guide businesses through the process of applying for growth finance.

As the holding company of the group operating under the trading name of British Business Bank, British Business Bank plc is wholly owned by HM Government and is not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The British Business Bank operates under its own brand name through a number of subsidiaries, none of which are authorised and regulated by the FCA.

British Business Bank plc and its principal operating subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

The accreditation from British Business Bank of Ak Intelligent Finance does not amount to any endorsement or warranty from the British Business Bank, the British Business Bank plc, or the government of the UK.

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  The SME Finance update from UK Finance reports total loan stock for SME loans of £82.644bn EOY 2017 and total new loans written in 2017 of £22.867bn; new loans 28% of the relatively static loan book. Assuming the same average duration for loans filling the funding gap as estimated by the Independent Lending Review, the annual unmet demand is as much as £9.7bn

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  The British Business Bank Small Business Finance Markets Report 2015-16 report (pg. 20) refers to the 2013 Independent Lending Review, which estimated the funding gap by assessing UK SME debt capacity compared with bank lending to UK SMEs. They noted: “This methodology estimated that the funding gap…was c£30bn – £35bn.” This is a total market size figure - https://www.british-business-bank/about/research-and-publications/small-business-finance-markets-report-2015-16