A new dashboard to scrutinise and monitor CBIL and Bounce Back Loan Data

Rangewell, the business finance experts, have produced Dashboards to help ensure continued scrutiny and understanding of the CBIL and Bounce Back data being published.

Bounce Back Loan Scheme

• The value of payments via the Bounce Back Loan Scheme in the first week alone surpassed the total amount of CBIL Loans in totality to date – an incredible achievement in terms of execution by lenders.

• There was a 90% approval rate for Bounce Back Loans in the 2nd week – anything more would be highly unlikely given that banks still have a duty of care against reckless lending.

• Over the full period for both Schemes, the average size of Bounce Back Loans has been £30,534 v £178,334 for CBIL Loans.

• The Bounce Back Loan Scheme has been phenomenally successful – with £14.2bn lent in the first two weeks.

CBIL Scheme

• Approval rates for CBIL Loans last week was only 28% compared to the overall rate of 50% since the scheme started – it will be interesting to see if this recovers this week or is a symptom of lower-quality loans / higher scrutiny by lenders.

• The volume of CBIL applications has continued to fall but the value of approved loans is now at  £249,000 – the highest to date (compared to an average since commencement of £178,334) – skewed no doubt by the lower value loans (under £50,000) now being taken by the Bounce Back Scheme.

Nic Conner, Rangewell’s Research Consultant, commented on the Dashboards:

“With the seventh week of CBIL Scheme data and the third week of Bounce Back Loan data due to be published today, we run the risk of “Data Blindness” – which would be unhelpful – hence the weekly Dashboard that Rangewell will be producing – we hope to be able to spot the interesting nuggets of information that can be lost in the dry data.”

“Most of the data we use for the dashboard is released once a week by the Treasury. It is not as detailed or as helpful as it should be given it only contains headline figures, rather than a detailed breakdown:

• By sector

• By region

• By lender

Rangewell recently wrote an open letter to the Chancellor calling for the data to be released in more detail and via open data. We welcome their move a few weeks ago to publish this information but they need to go further. 

Useful as this information is, it is not fully transparent. If the Treasury wants to ensure the greatest success of the CBIL and Bounce Back Schemes, we would encourage them to provide more granular data which will allow government departments, banks, other lenders, trade associations, local authorities and others to monitor which business sectors and regions may need more bespoke support.”

Nic Conner, Rangewell’s Research Consultant, commented on the success of the Schemes:

“Although it’s unfashionable to say so, the response from lenders, on the whole, has been highly impressive in terms of the volume of loans they have been able to approve – on the ground, we have seen impressive examples of local managers at all lenders doing everything they can to help their business clients.”

“It is important to note that, especially with the Bounce Back Loans, participating lenders are not going to profit from the Scheme. The small size of the loans, substantial administrative costs and the high expected losses that they will have to manage on behalf of the government make that a certainty – in our opinion, their participation should be seen as a genuine effort to step up and help the British economy; as well as, no doubt, reacting to a certain extent to government “requests”.”

“While the Bounce Back and CBIL Schemes have been a godsend to hundreds of thousands of small businesses to help them cover expenses during the lockdown, we would now encourage the government to start thinking in more detail about the future. We see most switched-on businesses now preparing for the next 6 – 18 months, rather than just on day-to-day survival. The government should be thinking and planning alongside them for the next stage of economic recovery.”