As an accredited lender for the British Business Bank, BCRS Business Loans are a delivery partner for the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). Recently, you may have seen some CBILS FAQs featured on our social media channels. For those of you that do not currently follow us on social media or want to view them all in one place – never fear – we have answered your questions and compiled our top five CBILS FAQs and listed them below for your perusal.

What is the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS)?

CBILS provides facilities of up to £5 million for smaller businesses across the UK that are impacted by Covid-19. CBILS supports a wide range of business finance products, including term loans, overdrafts, invoice finance and asset finance facilities.

Am I eligible to apply for CBILS with BCRS?

To be eligible for a facility under CBILS, an SME must:

• Be West Midlands based in its business activity with an annual turnover of no more than £45m
• Your CBILS-backed facility will be used to support primarily trading in the UK
• Your application must be for business purposes
• Your business must generate more than 50% of its turnover from trading activity
• Have a borrowing proposal which, were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, would be considered viable by the lender, and for which the lender believes the provision of finance will enable the business to trade out of any short-to-medium term difficulty
• Self-certify that it has been adversely impacted by the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Will I need security to get a CBILS loan?

Having insufficient security is no longer a condition to access the scheme and personal guarantees are not required on facilities under £250,000. The scheme provides the lender (BCRS Business Loans) with a government-backed guarantee, potentially enabling a ‘no’ credit decision from a lender to become a ‘yes’.

When do applications close?

The scheme went live on 23rd March 2020 for an initial period of six months. The application deadline has now been extended until 31st January 2021

How do I apply?

In the first instance, businesses should approach BCRS Business Loans directly – ideally via our website as telephone lines are likely to be busy due to limited capacity following social distancing advice.

Simply submit an online application form by clicking here, which takes less than two minutes to complete.

For more information about our CBILS offering please click here.

Click here for our CBILS support hub.

For more tips and tricks and trends head to our blog page.

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Published by Lauren McGowan – Digital Marketing Assistant