Funding Xchange outs itself as first BCR Pool E applicant

Funding Xchange, the alternative lender marketplace, has announced that it is among the fintechs which have submitted funding bids as part of the BCR’s £100m Pool E. 

The bid is a joint application along with business support network Enterprise Nation and the funds will be used to integrate Funding Xchange into a new Enterprise Nation Finance Portal. 

According to Emma Jones, founder and CEO of Enterprise Nation: “Adding the Enterprise Nation Funding Finance Portal to the overall Enterprise Nation platform would make a huge difference to many of the businesses that look to us for help and support.” 

“Funding Xchange is already doing amazing things to plug the funding gap, and with the support of the RBS Remedies fund, we could do so much more to help businesses at this critical time.” 

Pool E is the long-awaited solution to the BCR’s dilemma of what to do with the £50m returned by both Nationwide and Metro Bank earlier this year after both admitting they would be unable to deliver on earlier commitments. 

The new Pool mirrors some of what the earlier Pools A-D were trying to achieve, although the sums of money are far smaller this time around and have been split across two rounds.  

Round 1 is aimed at Pool D eligible applicants with two £5m and four £2.5m grants, the application window for this Pool closed last week with awardees being announced on 17 August. 

Round 2 is aimed at Pools A, B and C eligible applicants with one £35m grant, one £25m grant and two £10m grants, applications for these opened on 22 June with awardees being announced on 21 September. 

So far, no other applicants have made their bids public, a marked change from last time when Starling,Monzo, and others drew great attention to the process and their plans to apply. 

Enterprise Nation last week partnered with Amazon to launch a UK SME support package called the Amazon Small Business Accelerator with free e-learning, virtual events and more.