Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Danske Bank has agreed to refund around 305 small businesses that it charged to set up business accounts when they applied for bounce-back loans. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says that the bank will refund around £16,450 for breaking rules Danske Bank has agreed to write to the 305 affected SME customers to apologise…
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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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A new study shows UK banks have lent around £29.3bn more to businesses over the past year. This compares with a 5.3% jump in lending in the EU on average. UK bank lending also surpassed Germany (7%) and Spain (3%). UK banks have managed to increase lending by 8% since the start of the Covid-19…
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Latest Government figures have shown that the banking and finance industry has provided more than £75 billion in finance to over 1.6 million UK businesses through government-backed coronavirus lending schemes according to newly published HM Treasury data. Lenders have provided finance to over 30,600 businesses through Bounce Back Loans over the past month, bringing the…
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UK consumers lost a record £479 million last year to scammers according to new figures from UK Finance. The report showed that criminals turned to online and technology-enabled scams to exploit people’s fears about the Covid-19 pandemic. Impersonation scam cases, in which criminals impersonate trusted organisations to trick victims into handing over their money, almost…
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UK Finance has released a new guide to help SMEs who will need to face to change in benchmark interest rate. LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate ) is the most common interest rate benchmark in the UK, the transition to alternative rates will impact a significant proportion of UK businesses. It can be found in…
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New figures released by the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) show that total asset finance new business (primarily leasing and hire purchase) fell by 16% in January 2021 compared with the same month in 2020. The plant and machinery finance sector reported a fall in new business of 3% in January compared with the same…
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Esme Loans, NatWest’s standalone digital lending platform for SMEs and scale-up businesses, has announced that it will close. Launched as a pilot by NatWest in early 2017, Esme Loans offered an alternative financing option for SME customers looking for faster, unsecured business loans for a wide range of business purposes, alongside its range of conventional…
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New figures show that lenders have prevented nearly £1.6 billion in fraudulent claims against the Government-backed bounce-back loan schemes. The British Business Bank, which administers the scheme for the Treasury, said that 43,958 attempted loans had been blocked because they were suspected to be fraudulent claims since the scheme was launched in May to help…
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Atom bank has announced a partnership with Credit Kudos to provide business loan affordability assessments with an aim to deliver £1 billion in lending over the next two years. Through this partnership, Atom will use categorisation and risk insights to automate underwriting assessments, enabling real-time decisions and improving the customer experience compared to traditional paper-based processes.…
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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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PwC has joined up with software specialist Flexys to provide banks with a smart solution to manage loans offered to their customers as part of the government’s initiative to enable businesses to maintain financial stability during the Covid-19 pandemic. Flexys and PwC have developed a platform that will help banks manage customer requests for ‘Pay…
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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…
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