Government-backed lending slows as UK financial institutions dish out £31bn

Bounce Back Loans are still by far the most popular government scheme, but both the rate of lending and applications have slowed.

The amount lent out to UK businesses by both banks and non-bank lenders through government-backed loan schemes now totals over £31bn, an increase just shy of £4bn from last week.

Bounce Back Loans are still the most popular scheme with over £21bn dished out by UK lenders, a jump of nearly £3bn from the week before.

Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans (CBILS) are trailing behind with nearly £9bn lent out, a small increase of only £770m in the week beginning 24 May 2020.

Similarly, the government-backed offering for large businesses, Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), is by far the least popular with only £1.1bn having been given out in total.

CLBILS also has the lowest rate of acceptance, which currently sits at just under a third of all applications being approved.

Bounce Back Loans still have the highest acceptance rate at 80 per cent and CBILS has a 51 per cent acceptance rate, a marginal increase from last week’s rate of 50 per cent.

Both the rate of lending and the rate of applications to the Bounce Back Loan scheme has slowed—there were just over 104,000 applications to the Bounce Back Scheme last week, compared to over 187,000 the week previous.

Last week, £2.8bn was dished out under the Bounce Back Loan scheme, compared to £4.3bn the week beginning 24 May.

Whereas the number of applications to both the CBILS and CLBILS has increased from the week before and there were just six applications to CLBILS in the week beginning 24 May, compared to 77 last week.

CBILS saw over 5,000 new applications last week, up from just shy of 3,500 in the previous week.

For the first time, HM Treasury has also included the number of applications to the Future Fund.

To date, there have been 464 applications to the government-backed fund aimed at companies that have been unable to access the other schemes on offer.