CBILS funding reaches £22bn as deadline nears
More than £22bn has been loaned to 92,449 businesses via the government-backed coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) to date.
According to the latest data from the British Business Bank, the total amount of money delivered to businesses via government-backed loans has reached £73bn.
Several peer-to-peer platforms and alternative lenders have been approved to offer CBILS loans, including Funding Circle, Folk2Folk, Assetz Capital and LendingCrowd.
As of 15 November 2020, Funding Circle had originated £1.35bn in loans under the scheme, representing six per cent of all CBILS distributions.
Read more: Funding Circle strikes another CBILS securitisation
The British Business Bank also revealed that £45.6bn has been loaned via the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), with more than 1.5m small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) receiving loans up to the value of £50,000. Funding Circle is the only P2P lending platform which has been authorised to offer BBLS.
705 loans have been granted via the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme (CLBILS), worth a combined total of £5.3bn.
A further £1.1bn has been spent on convertible loans for 1,140 companies as part of the future fund scheme.
The future fund closed to new applications on 31 January 2021, while the other three government lending schemes are set to end on 31 March 2021. However, there has been speculation that Chancellor Rishi Sunak will use his 3 March Budget to announce a new extension.
Sunak is also expected to clarify plans for a successor scheme to the government’s business lending supports during the upcoming Budget.
The successor scheme was announced in September 2020 with a view to a January launch. However, in December 2020, the current emergency loan schemes were extended to March 2021.