Banking Competition Remedies Ltd announces the awards of Capability and Innovation Fund Pool B
The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) today announces the results of the Capability and Innovation Fund Pool B grant process.
The Capability and Innovation Fund Pool B is designed to promote competition in the market for banking services to SMEs in the United Kingdom through the modernisation of existing business current account offerings or the development of new business current accounts or ancillary product propositions for SMEs in the UK.
The grants which have a combined value of £80m are awarded as follows:
An award of £50m to Nationwide Building Society
An award of £15m to Investec Bank plc
An award of £15m to The Co-operative Bank plc
Each of the three successful applicants will shortly be invited to enter into a Capability and Innovation Fund Agreement with BCR.
As part of the application process, each organisation has provided BCR with a set of public commitments stating what it will deliver with these funds. The commitments of those awarded can be found at https://bcr-ltd.com/public-commitments/
Once the Capability and Innovation Fund agreement has been signed, progress against each successful applicant’s public commitments will be published on a quarterly basis on the BCR website.
How BCR makes CIF decisions:
As required in the project design, BCR engaged an external contractor, Baringa, with specialist procurement and evaluation experience to deliver the pre-board processes and act as a resource to the BCR board.
The assessment and decision-making processes have been completed on time and adhered to the assessment criteria, which can be found at https://bcr-ltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Capability-and-Innovation-Fund-Assessment-Criteria-v1.0.pdf
Consideration by the BCR Board centred on assessment of the extent to which eligible applications advance the objectives of the scheme as clearly set out by BCR and contained within the application process.
More information on the decision-making process can be found at https://bcr-ltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/How-does-BCR-make-CIF-decisions-v1.1.pdf
Commenting on the Pool B grant process, Godfrey Cromwell BCR’s Chairman said: “Pool B is the second group of grants from the Capability and Innovation Fund aimed at increasing competition in the UK business banking market with the overall purpose of improving financial products and services available to SMEs.
We look forward to these organisations delivering on their public commitments and to further announcements for Pools C and D in the coming months.”
BCR received a total of 13 applications from 10 applicants for the Pool B process during an application window between 1 February 2019 and 29 March 2019.