Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Nucleus Commercial Finance has revealed that a quarter (23%) of SMEs in the UK had little or no savings before the pandemic hit earlier this year, including 42% of sole traders, according to new research. The research showed that many UK SMEs are deeply concerned about the lasting effects of COVID-19 on their business, with…
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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 winners of the 2020 Credit & Collection Technology Awards have been announced following a live interactive virtual awards broadcast yesterday (Thursday 19th November). The awards are the flagship event for innovational technological professionals working in credit and collections and the fourth annual event honoured the UK’s technological innovators, celebrating outstanding achievement across nineteen hotly…
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Harley Kagan, currently Group Managing Director of United Trust Bank (UTB), is to become the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the bank from January 2021. The appointment comes as current CEO, Graham Davin, announced his intention to step down from the role he has held since leading a management buy-out of the Bank in 2004.…
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Invoice finance provider and fintech firm Optimum Finance has appointed two regional Sales Directors across three UK regions alongside the promotion of Lynn-Marie Jameson to Commercial Director. Kelvin Thomas joins the business as Regional Sales Director for Wales and the West and Iain Hendry as regional Sales Director for the South East. Thomas and Hendry…
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Over £1.1 billion of suspected fraud via the government’s bounce back loan scheme has been prevented by lenders so far, an indication of how criminals have aggressively targeted the scheme. Estimates from the British Business Bank provided to the Commons public accounts committee said lenders had rejected 26,933 bounce-back loans over concerns they could be…
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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 11% in September 2020 compared with the same month in 2019. In the nine months to September 2020, new business was 27% lower than in the same period in 2019. The…
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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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New research has found that regions in the North of England could lose between six and fourteen years worth of growth due to the financial hit created by the pandemic. The research by business lender iwoca found that the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber have been forecast to lose 11.7%, 11.2%…
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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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A majority of finance chiefs in the UK are pushing back their expectations for a return to the levels of demand seen before the Covid-19 pandemic, the results of a closely-followed survey. Finance leaders continue to rank the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as the top risk to their businesses, followed by rising geopolitical issues…
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