A key objective of the Bank is to boost the supply of finance for smaller businesses in areas of the market that don’t work well. We measure our success against this objective by measuring both how much finance we ourselves deploy, and how much the private sector contributes in addition to this.

Each year, the Bank influences this measurement by committing funding through our programmes. Once we have committed funding, our delivery partners typically take a number of years to draw the funding down as they finance smaller businesses. We then add the combined funds drawn to the ‘stock’ of finance. When a borrower repays a loan or an investment is realised, the funds can be returned to the Bank and other investors and will be taken out of the stock of finance measure.

In order to increase supply, we have built up a wide range of delivery partners who can get that finance to the market. Over the past year we have made new commitments of £957m.

As at the end of 2018/19, we had £6.6bn of stock of finance supported, an increase of 27% from £5.2bn the previous year.

This increase was driven primarily by the higher than expected leverage across most programmes, with the Investment Programme and the UK Innovation Investment Fund doing particularly well in this respect, as well as a higher number of ENABLE Guarantees.

case study

Yorkshire Dama Cheese

Programme: Start Up Loans

Razan Al-Sous decided to set up Yorkshire Dama Cheese after fleeing war-torn Syria with her husband and three children in 2012.

Arriving in Yorkshire, she struggled to find work despite having a degree in pharmacology. She noticed how the halloumi cheese sold in the UK was often of poor quality and decided to start making halloumi cheese using Yorkshire-sourced milk instead.

She used a £2,500 Start Up Loan to buy the equipment she needed. Her products are available in Morrisons and online. She has won several awards including the World Cheese Award Gold Prize 2016 and was nominated by former Prime Minister David Cameron for recognition on International Women’s Day 2015.

Debt

Start Up Loans

Since it began in 2012, the Start Up Loans programme has delivered over 63,000 loans, providing over £500m of funding to an average of 25 businesses a day. The programme has contributed to the creation of more than 75,000 jobs.

Combining the British Business Bank with Start Up Loans in April 2017 has enabled us to take a more integrated approach to supporting microbusinesses, with the aim of delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment of 75,000 Start Up Loans by 2020. The programme was extended for a further year at Autumn Budget 2018.

Enterprise Finance Guarantee

The Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) is our flagship debt programme. Since its launch in 2009, it has supported the provision of over 30,500 business loans to a value of over £3.2bn.

It has a wide range of delivery partners, including all the major high street lenders. This means that it has a broad reach, which makes it a useful instrument for quickly targeting specific market requirements.

The EFG programme has continued to add new delivery partners through 2018/19, including through its new asset finance variant.

ENABLE Guarantees

The ENABLE Guarantee programme entered into £550m of transactions with three lenders in 2018/19.

We expanded ENABLE Guarantees to facilitate loans specifically targeted at the housebuilding sector in 2017 and launched a new ENABLE Build variant in April 2019, funded by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

ENABLE Funding

This year we entered into one new transaction for a total amount of £150m under our ENABLE Funding programme, bringing the total funding we have committed to smaller finance providers to over £590m.

Since the first transaction in September 2015, the programme has supported lending to more than 31,750 businesses.

Equity

Angel CoFund

Now in its seventh year of operation, the Angel CoFund has invested over £280m in over 87 companies, together with third party investors. Its portfolio of high-growth businesses is diverse, covering sectors such as healthcare and life sciences, digital media and information technologies (including Fintech), creative industries, and food.

In 2018, the Angel CoFund delivery team, who had previously been seconded from the British Business Bank, became permanent employees of Akero Capital Partners, a new management vehicle with greater independence and the ability to raise additional commercial capital.

Enterprise Capital Funds

There are now 28 Enterprise Capital Funds, with a total investment capacity of £1.2bn, including £500m of private sector commitments. In 2018/19, the ECF programme received in the region of 85 enquiries, of which six are currently in early stage discussions and two in the due diligence process.

British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital (BPC) launched in June 2018, having been announced at the Chancellor’s 2017 Autumn Budget following the Patient Capital Review. It supports UK businesses with high growth potential to access the long-term financing that will enable them to grow into world-class businesses. Over the next 10 years, BPC’s investment aims to unlock a total of £7.5bn of additional funding.

BPC was seeded with around £400m of existing and approved venture and growth fund commitments from British Business Investments (BBI), a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank. In the past year, 12 investments were completed, with BPC committing to over £330m exceeding the very ambitious targets set by Government.

Managed Funds

The Managed Funds programme, part of BBI, was launched in May 2018. The programme aims to invest £500m in large-scale funds of funds to boost the amount of patient capital available to the UK’s high growth potential businesses.