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British Business Bank increases existing sustainability incentivising ENABLE Guarantee transaction with Oxbury Bank to £300m

Press release 18 February 2025

  • The £300m guarantee will provide Oxbury with £150m of additional lending capacity for the agricultural sector
  • The transaction continues to offer a pricing discount to Oxbury to promote additional lending that meets certain sustainability metrics.

The British Business Bank has agreed a further £100m increase to its existing ENABLE Guarantee transaction with leading fintech Oxbury Bank, a UK bank with a singular focus on farmers, food production and the rural economy.

This second increase brings the British Business Bank’s total transaction to £300m and will help provide Oxbury with £150m of additional lending capacity. The transaction continues to offer a pricing discount to Oxbury to promote additional lending that meets certain sustainability metrics. As at December 2024, around 14% of the portfolio met the criteria for this pricing discount.

Chester-based Oxbury launched as a fully regulated bank in February 2021, offering a range of flexible lending and asset finance solutions tailored to the specific needs of farm businesses.

Oxbury combines its own proprietary digital banking platform – Oxbury Earth – with a team of dedicated relationship managers providing a wealth of agricultural experience and banking advice for clients.

In less than three years, Oxbury Bank has exceeded £1.1bn of drawn lending. In addition, it has attracted £2.3bn in savings deposits from farm businesses and consumers wanting to support the rural economy, reaching profitability in 2023. The bank will continue to support the sector with a further significant of lending in 2025.

The Chester-based bank is backed by institutional agriculture and AgTech investors, as well as other stakeholders in the sector. In total Oxbury has raised in excess of £162m.

Michael Strevens, Managing Director, Structured FI Solutions, British Business Bank said:

Increasing this transaction by a further £100m demonstrates our commitment to supporting smaller businesses across the rural economy. We are delighted to see 14% of the portfolio meets our sustainability metrics and look forward to seeing that percentage grow. We are excited to see the further growth that this partnership can provide to the sector in 2025 and beyond.

James Farrar, Co-Founder and CEO of Oxbury Bank, said:

We are thrilled to expand our partnership with the British Business Bank to increase lending to SMEs within the farming and food sectors. Once fully utilised, the full £300m ENABLE Guarantee will support £150m in extra SME lending, further enhancing Oxbury's ability to positively impact farming and the rural economy. This funding also reflects our commitment to sustainability in the sector by 2025.

Further Information

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Notes to editors

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 drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK and to enable the transition to a net zero economy, by improving access to finance for smaller businesses. 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’s core programmes support over £17.4bn 1 of finance to almost 64,000 2  smaller businesses.

As well as increasing the supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of finance options available to smaller businesses. The British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to businesses about finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success.

The British Business Bank is also responsible for administering the government’s three Coronavirus loan schemes and its Future Fund, together responsible for delivering £80.4bn in finance to 1.67m businesses. These schemes are now closed to new applications.

British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. Wholly owned by HM government, the Bank and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found at British Business Bank

The transaction described above does not constitute or imply any endorsement, warranty or recommendation by the UK government, the British Business Bank plc, its subsidiaries or any other party of Oxbury or its products or services.

About Oxbury

Oxbury is the UK’s first and only AgTech bank, sitting at the heart of the technology revolution sweeping British farming, and the only bank with a singular focus on the rural economy.

Oxbury was founded with a completely fresh vision for how a bank can support the UK’s critical farming and food ecosystem, addressing the finance gap created by traditional banks reducing critical working capital to farm businesses and removing specialist agriculture expertise.

With a proprietary fintech platform combined with decades of banking and farming experience, Oxbury offers clients more, flexible and reliable finance, along with unique data solutions that helps farmers deliver improved sustainability, provenance and productivity across the farming and food supply chain.

British farming and food is going through a period of radical transformation, and farm businesses require more dedicated finance, technology and data solutions to help them make the generational shifts required to improve sustainability, provenance and production standards across the farming and food supply chain.

Oxbury Bank Plc is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (Financial Services Register number: 834822).

For more information about Oxbury, visit: Oxbury

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