BCR publishes progress updates for all CIF recipients and update on charitable donation
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 December 2022. These are the last formal reports as required by the CIF Agreements, but it should be noted that all applicable awardees have agreed to report on an informal basis to BCR during 2023.
During this reporting period, Starling Bank and Ebury Partners successfully delivered their business cases in full. 18 awardees have now fully deployed their CIF spend and, of these, 14 have also delivered their co-investment funding commitment. At this time, the amount of CIF spend outstanding is £38.2m and Co-investment spend is £83.1m.
Market share of UK SME business bank accounts has continued to shift to a number of awardees with notably CTBB and Starling achieving 8.4% and 8.9% respectively and an impressive 27.6% of SME bank accounts being held across CIF awardees. Amidst some significant and unprecedented headwinds, the 21 awardees have transformed digital offerings, democratised access to business tools and financial products, enhanced and integrated FinTech ecosystems including new platform models, closed the funding gap for SMEs through alternative finance and have greatly improved the financial health of SMEs through new partnerships, relationships and integrations.
Richard Anderson chair of BCR states “It is a testament to the quality of awardees of CIF funds that they have remained focused on delivery in spite of some very challenging and unprecedented headwinds over the last years. They have challenged the status quo in the provision of financial services to UK SMEs and in many cases are now partnering with more traditional providers to provide SMEs with enhanced offerings. In line with the wider economy, some awardees have fared better than others but to an organisation, even when faced with difficulties, they have endeavoured to make a difference to UK SMEs. BCR congratulates all awardees on their achievements and will continue to monitor against business cases through to the end of 2023. In recognition of the significant challenges facing UK SMEs and the potential impact on their sustainability, the BCR Board has used its discretion in making a charitable donation of £574,000 to support Business Debtline.”
During 2022, BCR proposed that, post the conclusion of the CIF Agreements, awardees would continue to report against their public commitments through to the end of 2024. This was not approved by HMT and, therefore, BCR will commence its wind-up towards the end of 2023. As has been highlighted previously, unless an alternative reporting mechanism is put in place, after this time awardees will themselves be responsible for holding themselves to account and updating on their Public Commitments.
In anticipating an informal reporting period, BCR proactively asked awardees to submit revised business cases to ensure that their ambitions reflected the latest macroeconomic opportunities and challenges. In this reporting period, we received 7 in total from Metro Bank, The Currencycloud Group (‘Currencycloud’), Virgin, CTBB (Pool E), tomato pay, Swoop Finance (Pool D) and ezbob and these were all approved. ezbob has now indicated that it cannot meet its revised business case and details, as with all awardees, are included in their progress update below*;
Pool A fifteenth quarter update
- Starling Bank Limited public commitment progress update
- Metro Bank plc public commitment progress update
- ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update
Pool B fourteenth quarter update
- Investec Bank plc public commitment progress update
- The Co-operative Bank plc public commitment progress update
Pool C thirteenth quarter 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 fourteenth quarter update
- Codat Limited public commitment progress update
- 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 ninth quarter update
- Virgin Money UK PLC public commitment progress update
- ClearBank Ltd public commitment progress update
- Ebury Partners Limited 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
- Previse Ltd public commitment progress update
Pool F fifth quarter 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.
BCR is now informally monitoring the progress of CIF Awardees. Submissions of reports to BCR will next take place in April 2023 with a media bulletin update on 31 May 2023. The last update will be in January 2024.
Charitable Donation
With the formal monitoring for CIF now concluded following termination of the CIF Agreements, there is a residual sum of £574,000 in the Alternative Remedies Package Trust (“ARP”) resulting primarily from return of funds from awardees (as covered in earlier press releases). The governing agreement for the operation of the ARP sets out that this should be donated to a charity chosen by the BCR Board in its sole discretion and in its capacity as corporate trustee. Recognising the pressures on SMEs in the present economic climate, BCR has decided to donate the funds to Business Debtline which is run by the charity the Money Advice Trust. Business Debtline is the UKs only dedicated free debt advice service for people who are self-employed and other small business owners and gives free, confidential and independent advice on the phone, online and through webchat. SMEs have access to telephone-based specialist advisers and online resources to help them negotiate repayments and deal with their creditors themselves and improve their overall situation. As the only service that can deal with the full range of personal and business debt advice, covering all small business situations, and with over 250 years of collective experience among its advisers, Business Debtline has been given the role of national ‘Centre of Excellence’ for business debt advice by the Money and Pensions Service. In 2022, Business Debtline helped 21,250 small businesses and self-employed people by telephone advice sessions and 8,850 via webchat. In addition, there were 358,000 visits to the Business Debtline website.
In funding the work of Business Debtline, the ARP funds will help the Trust to support and improve:
- Access to advice for small business owners and self-employed people
- Financial Health – support people through its services to manage and improve their financial situation.
- Frontline Business Debtline support – to ensure its service has capacity to support the growing number of small business owners seeking advice and support from Business Debtline.
- Embedding New service enhancements – A new appointment booking system and an interactive Digital Advice Tool assisting with the debt advice process.