BBB: Over 90 per cent of RLS loans are on schedule
The British Business Bank (BBB) has revealed that 90.26 per cent of Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) loans are on schedule and 2.79 per cent have been fully repaid.
The latest figures also show that 2.11 per cent of the loans are currently in arrears and 1.74 per cent are currently in default.
The government guarantee has so far been settled on 1.58 per cent of the total RLS facilities offered by lenders.
The RLS saw accredited lenders deliver more than £4.5bn to small UK businesses before it ended on 30 June 2022.
The government provided a guarantee of 80 per cent for loans offered before 1 January 2022 and 70 per cent for loans offered on or after that date, to help businesses grow after the pandemic.
Of the £4.51bn of total funding offered through 20,643 facilities, £4.33bn has been drawn down through 20,100 facilities to date.
In the RLS performance data, which looks at the period up to 31 December 2022, the BBB said lenders had identified 81 RLS loans (equating to 0.40 per cent of the total, with an aggregate drawn value of £15.26m) as suspected fraud.
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“It is important to recognise that it is still very early in the life of the RLS,” said the state development bank, which administered the scheme. “Data being collected from scheme lenders is subject to refinement, addition, and correction over time, and should not be regarded as definitive nor conclusive as to the performance of the scheme.”
The data only relates to the first two phases on the scheme. This first iteration of the RLS was originally scheduled to run until 31 December 2021 but was extended by six months to 30 June 2022 as part of the 2021 Autumn Budget, resulting in the second iteration. Both closed on 30 June 2022.
A third iteration was announced by the government and opened for applications on 1 August 2022, data on the performance of which is not included in the latest publication.
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