How can the British Business Bank and the lending industry drive more investment into SMEs?

Christian Roelofs, chief executive of Finativ, will lead a panel at the Finance Connect UK Summer Conference examining how the British Business Bank and specialist lenders can collaborate to drive more investment into the SMEs that will deliver economic growth.

The session appraises what the Bank’s schemes have delivered, where government intervention is reshaping the market, and what a practical agenda for closer collaboration would look like.

The catalytic principle

The British Business Bank is required to act according to the “catalytic” principle set out in the Secretary of State’s Statement of Strategic Priorities of 21 October 2025. Its activities should be additional — taking greater risk where necessary to crowd private capital into underserved parts of the market. This is the test against which the Bank’s own activities are meant to be judged.

What the Bank has delivered

Over its first decade, the Bank has supported more than 200,000 businesses, deployed £6.3bn of public funding, and crowded in £16bn of private capital. Challengers and independents now hold around 60% of gross SME bank lending for the second consecutive year.

The Growth Guarantee Scheme has been extended to 5 April 2030. The Bank’s five-year plan commits to £13bn of Bank funding and £26bn of crowded-in private capital over the period. The plan includes continued support for Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) through the Community ENABLE programme, providing wholesale funding so CDFIs can lend to SMEs the commercial market does not serve.

The additionality question

Scale of delivery does not, on its own, answer the additionality question — whether the Bank’s activity is generating new lending, or supporting activity that would have happened anyway.

This session takes a practical look at how the intervention is working across the commercial tiers: from clearing banks and challengers at the top, through specialist independents, to near-prime lenders and CDFIs at the bottom. The FCA’s call for input on SME finance, published in March 2026, is examining the same territory.

What attendees will take away

• Learn how the Bank’s schemes — the Growth Guarantee Scheme, ENABLE, and the wholesale funding relationships — are contributing to SME lending capacity across the tiers
• Find out how that intervention is influencing the shape of the market, and whether it is changing who provides funding to which borrowers
• Explore how lenders and Government can collaborate more effectively to channel investment to the SMEs that will deliver growth

Panel

• Christian Roelofs, chief executive, Finativ (moderator)
• Paul Edwards, managing director, Lombard and specialist businesses, NatWest
• Kerry Howells, managing director, Tower Leasing
• Andy Taylor, managing director, Haydock Finance
• Matt Woodcock, membership director, Responsible Finance

Part of the opening plenary

This session sits within the conference’s opening plenary, which covers both consumer and business lending and sets out the central argument that specialist lending now operates in a market actively reshaped by government, geopolitics and regulation.

Kana Inagaki, auto industry editor at the Financial Times, interviews UK auto finance chief executives from 09:45 to 10:15. Christian Roelofs’ session follows from 10:15 to 11:00.