Nearly 600 firms have been approved for the future fund

590 companies have been approved for £588.3m worth of convertible loan agreements under the government’s future fund since it launched, the British Business Bank has revealed.

This is up from 465 companies having been approved for £468.7m worth of convertible loan agreements as of 21 July.

Since the scheme launched on 20 May, there have been 902 applications for the future fund, which offers convertible loans ranging from £125,000 to £5m from the government, subject to at least equal match funding from private investors.

This is a rise from 781 applications in the first two months of the scheme.

Read more: Chancellor expands the future fund

The British Business Bank has also released self-reported data from companies applying to the fund, showing the diversity of the firms taking part in the scheme in terms of location and the composition of the senior management teams by gender and ethnicity.

41 per cent of funding – worth £242.1m – was given to companies that have their headquarters located outside of London.

Of the total amount of £588.3m, 17 per cent is to companies headquartered in the South East and South West, 10 per cent in the North West, North East and Yorkshire and the Humber, eight per cent in the East of England, three per cent in the Midlands and three per cent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

London makes up 59 per cent of companies approved for the scheme, in line with the 66 per cent figure for equity investments in the capital last year, which the British Business Bank’s 2019/20 small business finance markets report shows.

82 per cent of funding under the future fund has gone to companies with mixed gender senior management teams.

Meanwhile, 64 per cent of funding, worth £344.2m, has been approved for black, Asian and minority ethnic only and mixed ethnicity management teams.

Read more: P2P lenders fundraising on Seedrs set to benefit from secondary market changes

Some peer-to-peer lending platforms and debt platforms have been using the future fund to match the money they receive from fundraising rounds.

P2P lending platform Assetz Capital is expecting to raise £1.5m from using the scheme to support its latest Seedrs fundraising round, to scale and prepare for lending under the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme.

Propio is hoping to utilise the government’s future fund to match £150,000 from private fundraising to raise £300,000, to support its delayed launch into P2P lending.

CapitalRise has raised more than £1.15m on Seedrs which it hopes to match from the future fund, to expand its product range, including the launch of a self-invested personal pension wrapper.

Meanwhile, Crowd for Angels is allowing firms to raise investment for the scheme on its platform, with investors able to put the money into an Innovative Finance ISA.