Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Business Loan Network, a peer-to-peer business lending platform has been placed into administration. The company was incorporated and commenced trading in 2010 operating an electronic peer-to-peer platform, with retail and institutional lenders investing in secured business loans. In December 2019 the company took the decision to close the platform to new business and following…
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New research commissioned by commercial data and analytics provider Dun & Bradstreet has found 45% of 250 UK-based CFOs and finance leaders surveyed are embracing new technologies to increase efficiencies and 43% plan on improving their data quality as they look to increase their ability to manage disruption in 2021. The survey focused on strategies…
Read moreUK Finance’s latest Business Finance Review figures have shown that gross lending to small and medium-sized businesses across the UK totalled £63.6 billion last year, some 162% higher than 2019. This underscores a significant rise in demand for finance as businesses responded to the pandemic. Government-backed lending schemes, alongside other loan and overdraft facilities, have…
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Up to 58% of SMEs in need could be excluded from Recovery Loan Scheme according to research by Purbeck Personal Guarantee Insurance. The company warns that many SMEs could find themselves excluded from the Recovery Loan Scheme, with little option other than to access finance through personal guarantee backed loans – putting their home and…
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A new government-backed loan scheme launches to provide additional finance to those businesses that need it. The scheme is offering loans of as much as 10 million pounds to businesses, the Treasury said. The government is providing an 80% guarantee for all loans, and interest rates have been capped at 14.99% — though they’re expected…
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Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) fraud, where companies apply for multiple government-backed loans to exceed lending caps, could be far lower than anticipated and points to the success of the scheme and creditor checks, according to data from the latest Equifax Market Pulse series. Previous estimates of how much the BBLS could lose to fraud…
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A new broker index has identified cash flow as a key reason for SMEs applying for finance. iwoca’s new SME Index, which covers a four-week period in January has revealed that 41% of brokers said the most requested reason for applying for unsecured finance was to ‘manage the day to day cash flows’. One in…
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The Government has announced a new Covid-19 business loan scheme as part of its budget announcement. The new scheme called the Recovery Loans Scheme replaces the Bounce Back Loan and Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, which have paid out nearly £73 billion to British businesses. The Recovery Loan Scheme will launch on 6th April 2021,…
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Peer to Peer lender, The House Crowd has entered administration. On 24th February, the Directors of The House Crowd, a regulated Peer-to Peer firm, placed the company into administration and appointed Frank Ofonagoro, Jeremy Woodside and Frank Wessely of Quantuma Advisory as joint administrators. The House Crowd, formed in 2012, operated a Peer to Peer…
Read moreNew HM Treasury figures have revealed that the banking and finance industry has approved another £2 billion of business loans over the past month, with the figure now rising to almost £73 billion to almost 1.6 million businesses so far through government-backed coronavirus lending schemes. Almost 29,500 Bounce Back Loans have been approved over the…
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The volume of Government loans granted to help SMEs through the COVID-19 crisis will be having a potentially devastating impact on the availability of ‘traditional’ lending, causing alarm in the lender broker community according to new research by Allica Bank. The Bank suggests that SMEs could be starved of funding to fuel future growth because…
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Research by debt specialist ACP Altenburg Advisory reveals that ‘normal’ lending to SMEs fell from £168 billion in December 2019 to £152 billion in December 2020, with emergency coronavirus funding through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBLIS) and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) seeing almost £61 billion lent to such firms by December…
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A new report by the British Business Bank has revealed how private debt has become a valuable source of finance for smaller businesses across the UK since the 2008 economic crisis – with £18.4bn of lending in 2018 and 2019. Private debt is often the only or most viable funding solution for smaller businesses and…
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