EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

COL data report - 1 st July 2020

The COL was installed to help innovative companies, such as startups and scaleups, in need due to COVID-19. These companies had difficulty applying for “regular” SME government facilities because of how they operate. The COL, a €300M government facility of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, executed by the ROMs, provides loans for these companies to bridge the COVID-19 crisis. From the start of the COL on the 29th of April until the 1st of July, around 1800 applications have been processed. The total requested funding amount for the coming 9 months is well over €630 million. The vast majority (74%) of the applicants requested a bridge loan amount in the €50.000-250.000 category, with a median of €240.000, to bridge these coming 9 months. Most applications were done by startups, around 59%, and scaleups made up for 23% of the applications. Based on portal core data, 600 applications (34%) have been fully approved and 1007 (57%) of the applications have been denied. And it took the ROMs, on average, around 1 month to decide on an application, and, if approved, to pay out the loan. As several cases after initial approval decision require time to be fully registered, legally confirmed and paid an actual forecast of the final approvals can be best made by zooming in on the ROM approval process. Based on that the anticipated number of approvals for these requests will move towards 700, implying a final expected approval rate of about 40%. And financially this would result in a forecasted amount of around €217 million in committed capital, co-financing not included. When looking at the data in this report that covers the first 2 months of the COL, it becomes clear that the COL is a government facility that provides necessary relief for innovative startups, scaleups and SMEs in the Netherlands battling negative effects of the COVID-19 crisis.