RBS bailout fund awards £40m for SME services
The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) has announced the results of the Capability and Innovation Fund Pool C grant process, part of a series of grants related to the government bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in 2008.
The Capability and Innovation Fund Pool C is designed to facilitate the expansion of business offerings to include lending or payments services to SMEs in the UK or international payments services to SMEs in the UK.
Four £10m grants have been awarded to the following organisations:
- Atom Bank.
- iwoca.
- Modulr Finance.
- The Currency Cloud Group.
The four successful applicants will shortly be invited to enter into a Capability and Innovation Fund Agreement with BCR. As part of the application process, each organisation has provided BCR with a set of public commitments stating what it will deliver with these funds. Progress against these public commitments will be published on a quarterly basis on the BCR website.
As required in the project design, BCR engaged an external contractor, Baringa, with specialist procurement and evaluation experience to deliver the pre-board processes and act as a resource to the BCR board.
The assessment and decision-making processes have been completed on time and adhered to the assessment criteria. Consideration by the BCR Board centres on assessment of the extent to which eligible applications advance the objectives of the scheme as clearly set out by BCR and visible within the application process.
BCR received a total of 76 applications for the Pool C process during an application window of 1 May to 28 June 2019.
