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British Business Bank announces four new lenders under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme

Press release 27 April 2020

  • Allied Irish Bank (GB)/AIB (NI), ThinCats, Paragon Bank and IGF to join 48 existing CBILS accredited lenders
  • 10 lenders also accredited through Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme

Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved four new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), which provides financial support to smaller businesses (SMEs) across the UK that are losing revenue and seeing their cashflow disrupted, as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. The new CBILS lenders are Allied Irish Bank (GB)/AIB (NI) 1 , ThinCats, Paragon Bank and IGF (Independent Growth Finance).

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 CBILS applications from smaller businesses across the UK.

More than 80% of the UK’s smaller businesses have a finance relationship with CBILS’ 50+ accredited lenders. The British Business Bank is accelerating at pace the onboarding of new lenders to further extend the scheme’s reach.

It was originally announced at Budget that an initial £1bn of government-backed lending would be available through CBILS. The government subsequently announced that it would be a demand-led programme, providing whatever the market needs.

Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS)

In addition, the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), the scheme to provide finance to mid-sized and larger UK businesses with turnover above £45m, the Bank has also accredited 10 lenders to provide term loans and/or overdrafts. These are Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank & Yorkshire Bank, Danske Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, NatWest, Santander, RBS and Ulster Bank.

Accredited lenders have continued to see an incredible demand for CBILS, so the Bank is helping to meet that demand and provide even more choice for smaller businesses by approving additional lenders for accreditation to the scheme. The announcement of 14 new lenders for both CBILS and CLBILS means these newly accredited lenders will be able to deploy vital funding and get additional finance flowing to smaller businesses across the UK as quickly as possible. Keith Morgan CEO, British Business Bank
These loans are an essential part of the wide-ranging package of support the government has put in place to help UK businesses. I am delighted to see more lenders offering loans which will, in turn, help even more businesses access the funds they need. Alok Sharma Business Secretary

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.

About the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme(CBILS)

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, delivered through more than 50 British Business Bank accredited lenders, is designed to support the continued provision of finance to UK smaller businesses (SMEs) during the Covid-19 outbreak. The scheme enables lenders to provide facilities of up to £5m to smaller businesses across the UK who are experiencing lost or deferred revenues, leading to disruptions to their cashflow.

The scheme supports a wide range of business finance products, including term loans, overdrafts, invoice finance and asset finance facilities.

Detailed information on CBILS can be found on the British Business Bank website – Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).

About the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS)

The Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) can help provide facilities of up to £25m for businesses with turnover from £45m up to £250m, and facilities of up to £50m for those businesses with a turnover of more than £250m who are suffering disruption to their cashflow due to lost or deferred revenues during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The new CLBILS scheme can support term loans, revolving credit facilities (including overdrafts), invoice finance and asset finance facilities. It is designed to give lenders greater confidence to provide funding by providing a partial guarantee of 80% of the outstanding facility balance.

Detailed information on CLBILS can be found on the British Business Bank website – Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS).

Further Information

Notes to editors

The following lenders have been newly accredited under different variants of the CBIL scheme:

LenderCBILS variantCBILS offer
AIB Group (UK) plcTerm LoansAIB can provide term loans from £10k to £5m to limited companies and partnerships of more than four partners, and £25k to £5m to sole traders and partnerships of three or less partners, across the UK.
IGFInvoice FinanceIGF provides invoice finance facilities up to £10m to smaller businesses. Through CBILS, IGF can provide term loans between £25k and £500k to sit alongside these invoice finance facilities.
Paragon BankTerm Loans and Asset FinanceParagon Bank can provide term loans and asset finance facilities up to £250,000 to smaller businesses across the UK.
ThinCatsTerm LoansThinCats can provide term loans from £1m up to £5m to mid-sized businesses across the UK.

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 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.

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