the British Business Bank has approved four new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) – The Co-operative Bank, Cynergy Bank, OakNorth Bank and Starling Bank.

Following their approval, each lender will be putting in place the operations required to start lending under the scheme and will confirm shortly the dates from which they will be ready to start receiving CBILS applications from smaller businesses across the UK.

More than 80% of the UK’s smaller businesses have a finance relationship with the 40+ existing CBILS accredited lenders. The British Business Bank is accelerating the onboarding of new lenders to further extend the scheme’s reach and has significantly increased the size of its accreditation team to manage the volume of interest.

The Bank is reviewing applications from a wide range of lender types – from PRA-regulated banks, to platform lenders, debt funds, invoice finance lenders, asset finance lenders and responsible finance lenders.

Keith Morgan, CEO, British Business Bank, said: “Our accredited lenders have seen an incredible demand for CBILS in the past few weeks, so we are helping to meet that demand and provide even more choice for smaller businesses by approving additional lenders for accreditation to the scheme.

“These new lenders will be able to deploy vital funding and get additional finance flowing to smaller businesses across the UK as quickly as possible.”

Shortly before the launch of CBILS, three lenders – Arkle Finance, Close Brothers and Secure Trust Bank – were accredited under the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme and have also been accredited under CBILS and are ready to take applications from smaller businesses. Coutts has been accredited for CBILS as part of RBS Group’s existing accreditation.