£20m in grants awarded to boost SME lending

The first grants have been awarded through the Capability and Innovation Fund to help provide better products and services to the SME market.

Banking Competition Remedies (BCR) has announced the results of the first application period of the Capability and Innovation Fund Pool E grant process.

The Capability and Innovation Fund helps to facilitate the commercialisation of financial technology that is relevant to SMEs. The grants have a combined value of £20m.

Funding Xchange and Onfido Limited have each been awarded £5m, and Codat Limited, ezbob, Fractal Labs, and Previse have each been awarded £2.5m.

Applicants were advised that, while all assessment criteria should be addressed, BCR was particularly interested in the applicant’s ability to deliver on its proposition build by the end of 2022, meeting the product and service criteria, while ensuring high security standards for end-users.

The second application period, which will award a combined value of £80m in grants, closed at the end of July and successful awardees will be announced in September.

Aidene Walsh, lead director on the Capability and Innovation Fund workstream said, “It has been really encouraging to see that, despite the challenging economic environment, this Pool has attracted a large number of diverse and innovative organisations that are making strong progress in meeting the needs of UK SMEs.

“All successful applicants have demonstrated a clear vision for how they will deliver on their business proposition by December 2022 and provide agile and enduring products and services to the SME market.”