Think of the British Business Bank, to give it its full name, as a kind of match.com for lonely bank accounts. Or, to be more prosaic, a state-backed economic development bank.
The British Business Bank was set up in 2012 to access other forms of finance for SMEs outside of the obvious lenders. Its aim was to input £10bn extra into SME lending over a period of years. Two years on, the Business Bank (I’ll drop the "British" if you don’t mind, to save on my word allocation) has introduced over £3 billion and claims to have helped more than ten thousand UK businesses.
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And how it works is this: a hedge fund or pension fund manager wants to introduce money to the market. Lenders have the knowhow and infrastructure to do that effectively, but how do they get to meet the investors? Enter the Business Bank. It aims to step in and put the investor in touch with the lender and then take a step back and wait for the wedding bells.
Both lender and investor benefit from using the Business Bank in another way too – fund matching. The Business Bank has £1bn earmarked solely for matched funds – effectively doubling the benefit to the market. This is of course money the Government will get back when it’s done its job – we are not talking about gifts as such. The first two tranches, £100 million and £300 million, have already been pumped into the market to match funding made available by investors. One lender close to the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) got matched funding that doubled their £20million to £40 million. Another smaller lender I’ve been talking to raised £5 million and the Business Bank promptly doubled that to £10 million.
£1 billion of new funding has been promised to help to expand existing schemes, and to create new ways to unlock finance for smaller businesses. The Business Bank is also taking over the management of £2.9 billion of existing commitments which help smaller businesses. It focuses on fixing what it refers to as "imperfections in the market", specifically including a lack of diversity of finance, and low awareness in the market of what is available. Exactly the sort of "imperfections" that the NACFB has been addressing for several years.
You can understand why the NACFB would want to throw its weight behind such a project, but why should the Business Bank be turning to us at all? It’s because we are a fully independent voice. My role is that of an independent adviser to the British Business Bank. And because of the people we meet on a day-to-day basis, I can give them an unbiased overview and case studies from real lenders without the self-advertising slant that a keen lender would be edging towards.
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By GlobalDataAs I see it, there are three related benefits to our member brokers. More money swilling around = good news for everyone. The promise of investment helps to encourage new lenders and so brings more choice to brokers. And, perhaps less important overall but still of major significance to the Association, our activity with the Business Bank continues to raise the profile of the NACFB at the highest level as an independent source of real-time market analysis. We’re helping to create reports that end up on George Osborne’s desk.
Because the Business Bank gathers data from so many sources, including the NACFB, it has plenty to say and if you’d like to take away my recommendation for a little further reading – once you’ve finished this copy of Leasing Life of course – there’s a Market Insight section on www.british-business-bank.co.uk which you might find worth a look.
Adam Tyler is chief executive of the NACFB
