FINANCE
The Business Bulletin
The impact of Government COVID measures on business finance The Government’s various COVID support measures are expected to cost approximately £500B once completed (various sources) but this doesn’t give the full picture when it comes to support for SMEs where there is a considerable amount of uncertainty about the final bill and will remain so for many years.
There is also doubt over how these measures will impact on more conventional business finance for a number of reasons, some of which I will explore here.
The Bounce Back Loan There is only one place to start and that is with the Bounce Back Loan (BBL). For those living under a rock, this is the cheap, minimal
due diligence loan which over 1.5m businesses took during the pandemic with a total loan figure of £47B being 100% guaranteed by HMRC. As well as potentially creating a liability for HMRC up to 2031 (when the final loan is repaid), the BBL, and its big brother the CBILS Loan (Corona Business Interruption Loan Scheme) which guaranteed 80% of a further £26B worth of loans, has flooded the SME marketplace with finance which has led to several lenders expressing severe caution or even pulling away from the market altogether. It seems highly likely that once
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