Government-backed business loans

The Growth Guarantee Scheme can generally support facility sizes of up to £2m per business group for businesses outside the scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and up to £1m per business group for Northern Ireland Protocol borrowers, although it will vary by provider.

We provide loans under GGS with terms from two years to six years.

The amount your Growth Guarantee Scheme Loan will cost will depend on how much you want to borrow, your interest rate and your loan term. We charge a one-off completion fee when you take out your loan, and your interest rate will be calculated based on a number of factors, including your credit score and financials for business lending, and the benefit of the Government guarantee.

We won’t charge a fee if you want to settle the loan early, and all our loans are fixed rate, so you’ll know exactly how much you’ll need to repay each month and what the cost of borrowing is.

The Growth Guarantee Scheme provides lenders with a 70% government-backed guarantee against the outstanding balance of the debt after it has completed its normal recovery process. That means if the business who takes a loan is unable to repay the debt, the lender can recover some of the funds from the government. This allows lenders to approve more loan applications and help more businesses.

Please note that the guarantee is to the lender, not the business, and you are always 100% liable for the debt.

When you complete our online application, we’ll assess your business based on the information you provide. The loan offer we make is determined by a number of factors which we review as part of your credit assessment, including the information you provide as well as publicly available data, for example from credit bureaus. Depending on your business’ financial profile, the best offer we can make may be for a different amount, or a different length term than you originally applied for. If we are able to make you a loan offer without using the guarantee offered by the Growth Guarantee Scheme, we will do so.

We ask for a personal guarantee on all loans, including those taken under the Growth Guarantee Scheme (GGS). However, Principal Private Residences cannot be taken as security under the Scheme.

Growth Guarantee Scheme (GGS) supports term loans, asset based lending and invoice financing. At Funding Circle we offer GGS term loans.

Growth Guarantee Scheme (GGS) loans are supported by a Government guarantee and count as a form of subsidy. There are limits on the amount of subsidy a business, and its wider group, can receive over any rolling three year period. You can find more information on this on the British Business Bank’s website, or in your Subsidy Certification document if and when you accept a loan offer.

Businesses will need to provide written confirmation that by taking a loan under GGS, they have not exceeded the amount of subsidy they are allowed to receive. All businesses in receipt of a subsidy from a publicly funded programme should be provided with a written statement confirming the level and type of aid received.

If you took out a loan under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) or Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) before June 30, 2024 you are still eligible to apply for the Growth Guarantee Scheme (GGS). The amount you have borrowed under a previous Government scheme may reduce the maximum amount you are eligible for under GGS.

The British Business Bank will administer the Growth Guarantee Scheme on behalf of the Secretary of State for Business and Trade.

The first two iterations of the Recovery Loan Scheme - designed to help UK businesses access finance as they recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic - supported £4.3bn of finance to smaller UK businesses.

The third iteration of the scheme offered more than £1bn of finance between its launch in August 2022 and it's closure at the end of June 2024. It was replaced with the Growth Guarantee Scheme on the 1st of July 2024.