Starling Bank delivers over £654m in BBLS loans
Starling Bank has delivered over £654m in loans under the bounce back loan scheme (BBLS) to over 24,000 companies.
The bank, which has partnered with Funding Circle to lend £300m to small firms through the ‘big three’ peer-to-peer lending platform, delivered the majority of its BBLS funds to firms in London.
In the capital, Starling Bank lent about £205.7m to 6,704 small and micro businesses through the 100 per cent government guaranteed scheme.
This was followed by £83.5m to 3,207 firms in the South East, £76.4m to 2,906 businesses in the North East and £56m to 2,142 companies in the East of England.
“The past few months have been extremely challenging for business owners right across the UK,” a spokesperson from Starling Bank said.
“Their companies will play a key role in creating jobs and securing economic growth as we recover from the coronavirus pandemic so we are happy to have been able to help them.”
Elsewhere, the South West, West Midlands and York and the Humber each saw businesses in their area receive around £40m to £43m in BBLS loans from Starling Bank.
The bank delivered £34.1m to 1,384 businesses in the East Midlands and £31.3m to 1,249 firms in Scotland.
Companies in the North East benefited from £18m in BBLS loans from the bank, Wales £17.3m and Northern Ireland £7.5m.
The latest Treasury figures showed that £33.7bn has been delivered to more than 1.1 million businesses through the scheme to date.
Similarly, Funding Circle, which was the first P2P lending platform accredited to deliver the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS), and has also expanded to offer BBLS, announced at the end of June that it had facilitated a 16 per cent share of CBILS.
At the time the platform had approved approximately £460m in applications and originated £300m.
The British Business Bank has released statistics on the number and diversity of companies taking part in the future fund.
465 companies have been approved for £468.7m worth of convertible loan agreements since the government’s future fund launched on 20 May. The majority of these were in London with 39 per cent of funding approved to firms in the capital.
