Annual Report and Accounts 2022

Our Annual Report and Accounts reports on the performance of the Bank during the 2021/22 financial year.

Between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022, the Bank’s provision of financial support to smaller businesses through its core programmes increased from £8.5 billion to £12.2 billion. This increase includes finance provided through the successful delivery of the Recovery Loan Scheme.

The report covers the performance of the Bank’s core programmes during the year, as well as setting out the Bank’s new strategic direction, centred on championing sustainable growth, backing innovation and breaking down barriers to access to finance.

Key highlights of the British Business Bank Annual Report

The Bank’s performance against its six objectives in the last financial year was as follows:

• Increasing the supply of finance to smaller businesses – The stock of finance supported through the Bank’s core finance programmes was £12.2 billion at the end of March 2022, supporting more than 96,000 businesses.
• Helping create a more diverse finance market for smaller businesses – The Bank continued to deploy the vast majority of finance in its core finance schemes outside of the largest UK banks, exceeding the target set. 98.4% of the Bank’s finance was provided outside the ‘Big Five’ banks.
• Identifying and helping to reduce regional imbalances in access to finance – The Bank exceeded its target through strong deployment of finance across the UK’s Nations and regions by deploying £900 million of finance outside London in 2021/22. The Bank was supporting almost 83,000 businesses outside London at the end of March 2022.
• Encouraging and enabling SMEs to seek the finance best suited to their needs – Prompted awareness of the Bank amongst small businesses surveyed in 2021/22 was 22%, a decrease of 3% from 2020/21, during which the Bank administered the high-profile Covid-19 loan guarantee schemes.
• Being the centre of expertise on smaller business finance in the UK, providing advice and support to the Government – The Bank met its objective in deploying its expertise to the government effectively, ranging from engagement on the Spending Review and administering the Covid-19 response schemes to fulfilling priorities on research and market engagement. There were almost 17,000 downloads of the Bank’s research reports in 2021/22.
• Achieving its other objectives while managing taxpayers’ money efficiently – The Bank achieved an adjusted return of 18.2%, significantly exceeding its target.