Budget 21: The measures introduced in today's Budget announcement could help to prioritise the most resilient business sectors, says Conister.
Budget 21: The measures introduced in today's Budget announcement could help to identify, prioritise and protect the most resilient business sectors, according to Conister.
Douglas Grant (pictured), director of Conister, particularly highlighted the introduction of a scheme to replace CBILS, offering £25,000 to £10m loans for businesses of any size, with government backing of a80% for lenders.
He said: "The economy has been like a coiled spring as lenders flush with liquidity in a low-yield environment and prepare for the potential of negative interest rates and looked to deploy capital to support resilient business sectors.
"Lenders and agile, resilient companies alike have been awaiting a directive on which sectors remain a government priority and we were also pleased to see that a new ‘restart grant’ recovery loan scheme has been announced alongside a Green Infrastructure Bank to be launched in Leeds.
"The BBLS and CBILS played instrumental roles in keeping many resilient SMEs alive and acted as important triage systems to identify and support viable businesses that needed credit, and we are pleased to see the government look beyond this triage phase and instead identify, prioritise and protect our most resilient individual business sectors and segments.
"At Conister, we have delivered upon all of our initial objectives.
"We had an allocation limit of £20m for the CBILS and BBLS schemes and so far we have lent £19.7m, and I expect we will fulfil our allocation this month.
"Without doubt, the scale of applications was enormous and so we applied for and received an additional allocation of £5 million for the CBILS scheme and we will focus lending this to robust business sectors that we believe will thrive in the future.
"Conister will continue to do all it can, working alongside government and traditional lenders, to support British businesses."
