BCR dishes out £12.5m in Pool F awards to Cashplus, Codat and Swoop Finance

Banking Competition Remedies has now finished redistributing its returned cash.

Three fast-growing fintechs—Cashplus Bank, Codat and Swoop Finance—will share £12.5m in cash grants as part of the Banking Competition Remedies (BCR) Pool F.

Cashplus and Codat will take £5m each, with Swoop awarded £2.5m.

The awards, announced this morning, come from previously returned grants from Ebury and Onfido over the last year, which led the BCR to start a new award process.

As part of its bid, Cashplus pledged to lend an additional £5bn to UK SMEs over the next four years, as well as committing £10m of its own cash towards SME banking initiatives.

Among its planned initiatives is an SME credit card with 1 per cent cashback, the launch of open banking payment options, a lending eligibility checker and a business version of its credit builder product.

“We understand that small businesses too often face the Catch-22 situation of trying to build a credit footprint while being refused even a modest loan,” said Cashplus CEO Rich Wagner. 

“The big banks just aren’t interested and it’s our mission to step in and support this vital pillar of the UK economy.”

Codat, which previously won £7.5m from the Pool D and E awards, additionally pledged to expand its financial APIs to include sales data for SMEs, which can improve lenders decisioning.

“For some of the smallest, newest businesses, emerging in the aftermath of the Covid crisis, sales data is both their most powerful asset to access finance and their biggest cause of bookkeeping headaches,” said Codat CEO Pete Lord.

“With this further funding, BCR recognises our intention to democratise sales data and ultimately make life easier for these businesses.”

The BCR said it had 33 applicants as part of the Pool F process and has now redistributed all its returned cash.