British Business Bank celebrates milestone
The British Business Banks’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) programme has now supported smaller businesses with 30,097 facilities totalling more than £3.2bn.
The 30,000th recipient is Blackpool-based business Euro Recycling Brokers Ltd, a waste management specialist which, since being established in 2015, has experienced rapid year-on-year growth. To help them realise their growth ambitions, the business needed a new funding partner to provide both the working capital and new funding to expand their workforce. Euro Recycling secured funding from ABN AMRO Commercial Finance (ABN AMRO), an accredited lender for the British Business Bank’s EFG programme.
EFG enables funders to provide facilities of between £1,000 and £1.2m to smaller businesses that are viable but unable to obtain finance from their lender due to having insufficient security to meet the lender’s normal credit requirements. The provision of over 30,000 facilities, at an average value of around £105,000, has allowed smaller businesses across the UK to grow and further their business ambitions.
Ben Essien, financial director at Euro Recycling said: “The team at ABN AMRO was able to provide us with a flexible funding solution and the additional headroom provided by the EFG will support us in achieving continued growth. We were particularly impressed with ABN’s transparency throughout the on-boarding process and look forward to working with them as our preferred partner for growth.”
Deborah Bell, commercial rirector at ABN AMRO Commercial Finance said: “EFG is a great funding solution, providing additional headroom alongside our receivable finance offering, to help UK businesses achieve their growth ambitions. We’ve been a proud partner of the British Business Bank helping provide established companies finance through the EFG Scheme, since its inception in 2009, and look forward to continuing our partnership in the future.”
Euro Recycling operates exclusively within the UK and expects that its further growth will benefit the local economy as it continues to provide environmentally friendly waste management solutions.
Launched in January 2009, the EFG programme provides its accredited lenders with a Government-backed guarantee for 75% of the outstanding balance of eligible facilities, potentially enabling a ‘no’ credit decision from a lender to become a ‘yes’.
At Autumn Budget 2017, the scheme was extended for a further four years and expanded to support up to £500m of lending per year.
Reinald de Monchy, managing irector, Guarantee & Wholesale Solutions at the British Business Bank, said: “In the near decade since the programme was launched, over 30,000 EFG backed facilities have now been made across all regions of the UK.
“The Enterprise Finance Guarantee is an important option and a real help for smaller businesses who need access to finance to grow but struggle to meet the lender’s normal security requirements. This major milestone for EFG shows how important the programme has been, and continues to be, in turning ‘no’ decisions into ‘yes’ decisions for UK smaller businesses seeking debt finance.”
