Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
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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A new survey by the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA) has indicated that the asset finance, consumer finance and motor finance industry sees opportunities for growth over the next year despite the heightened uncertainty caused by the latest restrictions to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. The association surveyed its members with respondents divided on the…
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New data published by the British Business Bank has revealed the regional distribution of loans under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS). More than 1.4 million loans have supported businesses and protected jobs across all sectors. The figures show that the retail and construction sectors have benefitted…
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New data from UK Finance has revealed that gross lending to SMEs in the first three quarters of 2020 amounted to more than double the annual total for 2019, reaching £54 billion. The data, released as part of the quarterly Business Finance Review, shows that the UK banking and finance industry has delivered an unprecedented…
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Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has today has published a report into the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) set up to help businesses at the height of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The new report contains six key findings: The Government was not sufficiently prepared to support micro-businesses despite the economic impact of the pandemic being a known risk…
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Following a concentrated period of uncertainty, new research from Hitachi Capital Business Finance found a significant proportion of small businesses are considering finance to enact their plans for 2021, as confidence gradually returns. Looking ahead to 2021, just over half (56%) of small business owners said they were considering taking finance for some of the…
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Latest HM Treasury figures have revealed that nearly 1.5 million businesses across the country are now supported by the UK’s banking and finance industry with a total of £65.5 billion in lending through government-backed Coronavirus lending schemes. Almost 1.4 million smaller businesses have now accessed financing as part of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme, with…
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The Covid-19 pandemic will cause firms to borrow over five times the amount in 2020 than in 2019, with many unlikely to start repaying until 2022 with total stock of bank lending to businesses forecast to close 2020 at £493bn, an 11% year on year increase, due to firms borrowing heavily through the pandemic. EY…
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The Treasury has announced that applications for the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme will now be open until the end of January. The extension, which carries support before the previous end point of 30th November, also applies to the Future Fund, an initiative…
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The latest Red Flag Alert research for Q3 2020 has recorded that 557,000 businesses are now in ‘significant distress’ after the largest quarterly leap in financially distressed companies since 2017. This 6% increase (from 527,000 in Q2 2020) in the last three months comes despite a backlog of court action preventing many CCJs and winding…
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Latest figures from HM Treasury have revealed that the UK’s banking and finance industry has supported over 1.4 million businesses across the country through government-backed Coronavirus lending schemes. Lenders have approved over 73,000 facilities through the CBIL scheme and over 1.3 million business owners have benefited from the Bounce Back Loan scheme. For larger businesses,…
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