Tide Capital Now Able To Distribute BBLS Loans To SMBs

Tide Capital, now accredited as a lender, will have the authority to distribute loans between £2,000 and £50,000 during the coronavirus pandemic to struggling businesses.

The bank plans to start with a series of Bounce Back loans from May 18 and onwards. The Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) offers lenders a 100 percent government backed guarantee, with any business established in the U.K. before March 1, 2020 and which suffered negative finances due to the pandemic eligible — in addition to not having difficulties before Dec. 31, 2019. If the businesses were having difficulties, the BBLS necessitates that the loan won’t break state rules or have to do with exports.

Under the BBLS, the rate of interest is 2.5 percent. The government will cover the costs for the first year and businesses won’t be required to repay any of the loans for the first year.

Companies interested in the loans will have to open up a Tide account in order to access the loans and manage repayments.

Tide Capital CEO Oliver Prill said he was glad the company could now offer such services during the pandemic.

“We are delighted to have been granted accreditation by the British Business Bank as a BBLS lender. We believe this is a vital scheme to support small businesses suffering as a result of this crisis, and are very pleased to be able to offer this support to our members,” he said, according to a press release.

Tide has recently partnered with Mambu, the cloud banking platform, in order to put forth new expansions on its services. Those expansions include more overdrafts, credit cards and invoice financing.

Tide Capital, which has around 150,000 members overall, represents one in 40 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.K.

Despite the help from the government in the form of the BBLS, many U.K. merchants warn that the fallout of the coronavirus will be great enough that much more help will be needed to get things on the right track again.