FLA welcomes extension of Recovery Loan Scheme

Commenting on the announcement in today’s Budget that the Chancellor will extend the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) until June 2022, Simon Goldie, Director of Business Finance at the Finance & Leasing Association said:

“This welcome move provides some certainty on business funding in the interim, albeit with a lower guarantee of 70%, but a permanent successor to the RLS must be developed.

“We have already recommended to Government that the new scheme should retain the best features of the RLS – the assignment of guarantee and retention of the lender fee arrangement.

“But it should also mirror the abiding principle behind the Enterprise Finance Guarantee asset finance variant, which was designed to ensure that lenders could provide funding for either assets or businesses that were outside of their usual risk appetite. This was a very successful way to get funding into every corner of the economy.”

Note to editors:

1. Confirmation of the extension of the Recovery Loan Scheme can be found in para 2.83 of the Budget red book  
2. In 2020, FLA members provided £113 billion of new finance to UK businesses and households. £86 billion of this was in the form of consumer credit representing over a third of total new consumer credit written in the UK in 2020. £27 billion of finance was provided to businesses and the public sector. FLA members financed more than a third of UK investment in machinery, equipment and purchased software in the UK in 2020.
3. For media enquiries, please contact the FLA press office on 020 7420 9656.