Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) publishes progress updates for all CIF recipients

Progress updates for Pool A, B, C, D, E & F recipients

The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) today publishes progress updates for all Pool recipients, providing a summary of performance against their public commitments to the period 31 March 2023. These are the first informal reports as agreed with CIF awardees when formal agreements ended in December 2022.

Out of the 26 awardees, 2 have now completed their business cases, a further 19 awardees have now fully deployed their CIF spend and, of these, 16 have also delivered their co-investment funding commitment. In addition, five awardees have delivered a total of nine public commitments this quarter, with the majority on track to deliver on outstanding commitments by year-end. BCR is continuing to work with all awardees to ensure the focus remains on achieving business cases and this will continue through to the end of 2023. BCR will be following up with a number of awardees ahead of the next reporting cycle to ensure key deliverables will be achieved by end 2023. Based on Q1 progress, it is forecast that at the end of the year there will be £23m of CIF funds and £64m of co-investment funds remaining.

Focusing on awardees that have not yet completed their business cases, during this reporting period market share of UK SME business bank accounts has continued to shift to a number of awardees (CTBB, Cashplus Bank, Metro Bank and Virgin Money). This quarter has seen a positive increase in brand awareness, and this has resulted in a significant increase in SME uptake of lending products across many awardees. Previse confirmed that it has taken the decision to restructure its UK business and shift its primary focus to its Virtual Cards product which is currently based in the United States and ezbob also confirmed the termination of its pilot and current limited pipeline.

Pool A Q1 2023 update

• Metro Bank plc public commitment progress update
• ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update

Pool B Q1 2023 update

• Investec Bank plc public commitment progress update
• The Co-operative Bank plc public commitment progress update

 Pool C Q1 2023 update

• Atom Bank plc public commitment progress update
• The Currency Cloud Group Ltd public commitment progress update
• iwoca Ltd public commitment progress update
• Modulr Finance Limited public commitment progress update

Pool D Q1 2023 update

• Codat Limited public commitment progress update
• OakNorth/Fluidly Limited public commitment progress update
• Form3 Ltd public commitment progress update
• Funding Options Limited public commitment progress update
• Swoop Finance Limited public commitment progress update

Pool E Q1 2023 update

• Virgin Money UK PLC public commitment progress update
• ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update
• Kriya (formerly MarketFinance) 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 (t/a tomato pay) public commitment progress update

Pool F Q1 2023 update

• Cashplus public commitment progress update
• Codat Limited public commitment progress update
• Swoop Finance Limited commitment progress update

*A summary of performance against awardees public commitments can be found in the notes to editors.

Submissions of the next quarterly informal reports to BCR will take place in July 2023 with a media bulletin update on August 31^st. The final update will be due in January 2024.

 

31/05/2023