Adam Afriyie – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Adam Afriyie on 2016-05-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he has taken to support (a) peer-to-peer lending and (b) challenger banks.

Anna Soubry

Access to finance on flexible, competitive terms is essential for growing businesses. Challenger banks and alternative finance providers have an important role to play in widening choice and promoting competition.

Government is bringing into effect provisions in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 which will require the largest banks – where they decline lending requests from small business customers – to offer those customers the opportunity for their details to be referred to a government-designated funding platform. These platforms will be brought into operation later this year and will allow SMEs to match their requirements with offers from peer-to-peer platforms and challenger banks.

During the last 12 months, the British Business Bank has supported 3,301 businesses through the peer-to-peer platforms Funding Circle, RateSetter and Zopa. The British Business Bank also supports the growth of challenger banks by providing wholesale funds alongside private sector investors.