Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) publishes progress updates
The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) today publishes progress updates for Pool E recipients, providing a summary of performance against their public commitments to the period 31st August 2021.
The public commitment updates this reporting period have generated a number of trials and soft launches of new functionality for SMEs. In addition, the distribution of Pool E funded solutions and services is gaining traction via relationships of awardees with larger institutions.
Awardees progress against public commitments made can be found here. There have been no changes to business cases for Pool E awardees during this quarter.
Aidene Walsh, CIF executive director, said: “The strong focus on delivery has continued for Pool E awardees with almost all having soft-launched new functionality in the quarter and BCR is delighted to see that a number have delivered on several Public Commitments ahead of target. The external market continues to impact on demand for lending products particularly with the smallest SMEs, but the vast majority of awardees are expecting to see demand for their products and services to fall in line with their expectations in early 2022.
A summary of performance against awardees public commitments can be found in the notes to editors, with links to the full updates provided above:
Pool E fourth quarter update
- Virgin Money UK PLC public commitment progress update
- ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update
- Ebury Partners Limited public commitment progress update
- MarketFinance Limited public commitment progress update
- Funding Xchange Ltd public commitment progress update
- Codat Limited public commitment progress update
- ezbob Ltd public commitment progress update
- Fractal Labs Ltd public commitment progress update
- Previse Ltd public commitment progress update
The next progress updates for Pool E awardees will be in January 2022. Pool A, B, C and D awardees will provide their next progress update in November 2021, and Pool F awardees will provide their first progress update in February 2022. For more details on how BCR monitors CIF awardees see here.
Incentivised Switching Scheme
On the Incentivised Switching Scheme, reports on performance in respect of the first nine weeks of the twenty two week programme have been received from Starling, Virgin and TSB, the three organisations which were awarded £24.1m at the end of July.
Although total spend to the end of September (£4.5m) was lower than expected, this has to be seen in the context of a very short period between the business case approval and standing up the respective projects. This having been said, good progress is being seen on the deliverables promised which range across improved brand awareness, more seamless on-boarding of customers and specific product development.
All three organisations have expressed confidence on both expenditure and delivery of initiatives by the year end as well as the resultant positive impact on competition in the SME banking arena. Further details on the Public Commitment Updates for each of the organisations can be found on the BCR website here.