ThinCats to provide loans through the large emergency funding scheme
Alternative lender ThinCats has become the first non-bank lender to receive accreditation to deliver the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme (CLBILS).
CLBILS enables lenders to provide facilities of up to £200m to larger businesses which are experiencing lost or deferred revenues as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to disruptions to their cashflow. Last month the government raised the maximum limit from £50m to £200m.
This follows ThinCats, which exited the retail peer-to-peer lending market in favour of institutional funding last year, being approved to deliver the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) at the end of April. CBILS provides loans of up to £250,000 to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), impacted by the coronavirus.
For both schemes the business finance provider will initially support companies that are existing customers and plans on extending this to new borrowers at a later date.
Read more: New government measure fills ‘vital’ mid-tier funding gap
“We are delighted that the British Business Bank has approved ThinCats as the first non-bank lender accredited for CLBILS term loans,” said Amany Attia (pictured), chief executive of ThinCats.
“Our initial priority is to support our existing borrowers who we know well and can therefore help most quickly.
“Our focus remains on supporting mid-sized SMEs, however, we found that some of our larger customers with turnover greater than £45m also require funding, which we cannot provide under our existing CBILS accreditation.
“It made sense, therefore, to apply for the CLBILS accreditation to enable us to extend our support to slightly larger businesses.
“We will make further announcements about making CLBILS available to new borrowers in due course.”
According to figures from the Treasury, more than £38bn has now been distributed to UK businesses via government-backed lending schemes, including CLBILS and CBILS.