At last! Lloyds ramps up Covid lending: Bank boasts it has approved £1billion worth of loans to 32,000 firms
Lloyds approved seven times as many ‘bounce back’ loans to struggling firms in a day than it had in a month under the Government’s emergency loan scheme.
It boasted that it had approved loans worth a total of £1billion to 32,000 firms under the fast-track loan scheme in just 24 hours.
That represented around 98 per cent of applications, with firms receiving £30,000 on average.
Lloyds boasted that it had approved loans worth a total of £1bn to 32,000 firms under the fast-track loan scheme in just 24 hours
The lender has been accused of failing to sign off enough of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) to small and medium-sized businesses.
Since the scheme launched more than a month ago, the it has approved loans worth just £618million to more than 4,500 firms, far fewer than the other big banks.
As it emerged that the biggest lenders have been swamped by more than 200,000 applications worth more than £4billion for the bounce back loans in the first two days, Ian Cass, managing director of the Forum of Private Business, said: ‘It seems that if there is any kind of risk for them Lloyds are not interested.
‘The moment the Government takes 100 per cent of the risk they start to hand out loans like Smarties.’
The bounce back scheme was announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week, and launched on Monday.
The aim was to provide quick loans of up to £50,000, which are 100 per cent guaranteed by the Government, to small businesses.
Companies have been told the money, which is interest-free in the first year, would land in their accounts within 24 hours.
Under the CBILS scheme, loans are 80 per cent underwritten by taxpayers, meaning that banks bear some of the risk if the firm fails to repay.
Thousands of companies have been turned down for credit by their bank, or have faced agonising waits for money.
This has created a huge pent-up demand for credit.
RBS/Natwest said that by 3.30pm yesterday it had received more than 58,000 claims – worth £37,000 on average – or more than £2billion in total.
Santander received 19,977 applications on Monday, offering 15,414 loans worth £431million that day.
HSBC received 68,196 applications by 4.30pm yesterday, many from existing customers who have applied for loans worth £1.3billion.
Barclays had approved more than 32,000 loans by 4pm. But companies reported being blocked from applying online, with error messages flashing up.
Barclays admitted it cannot process online applications where there is more than one signatory on the account.
It said some online applications were blocked when details did not match those on its systems. Barclays said the ‘vast majority had been able to apply online’.