First five lenders accredited under new Recovery Loan Scheme

The lenders – Bank of Scotland, Coventry & Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust (CWRT), Lloyds Bank, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland – will be able to offer facilities of up to £2m for borrowers outside the scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol and up to £1m for those in scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The Bank says it is continuing to review applications from a wide range of lender types – from PRA-regulated banks to platform lenders, debt funds, invoice finance lenders, asset finance lenders and responsible finance lenders.

Additional lenders will be added to the accredited lenders listing on the British Business Bank website once they are confirmed as participants in the scheme.

The new iteration of the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) is designed to support access to finance for UK businesses as they look to recover and grow.

Businesses can use the finance for any legitimate business purpose – including managing cashflow, investment and growth. However, businesses must be able to afford to take out additional debt finance for these purposes. Earlier iterations of the scheme provided over £4.5bn of finance to smaller businesses between April 2021 and 30 June 2022.