If your company is facing short to medium term cashflow issues caused by Covid-19 the Coronavirus Business Interruption Scheme (CBILS) may well be an option.

You can find more details on the Government backed CBILS here, but in summary you will be eligible if:

  • The loan is for business purposes
  • The business turnover is below £45m
  • The business generates 50% of its turnover from trading
  • The CBILS backed facility is used to support primarily trading in the UK
  • Have a borrowing proposal which, were it not for the current pandemic, would be considered viable by the lender, and for which the lender believes the provision of finance will enable the business to trade out of any short-to-medium term difficulty. Current list of accredited lenders and partners.

The following trades and organisations are not eligible to apply:

  • Banks
  • Building Societies
  • Insurers and Reinsurers (but not insurance brokers)
  • The public sector including state funded primary and secondary schools
  • Employer, professional, religious or political membership organisations or trade unions

Help with your borrowing proposal

Your lender is likely to require the following information. If you need our help in preparing your borrowing proposal, please do get in touch:

  • Last two sets of accounts filed (unabbreviated)
  • Latest management information (Until end February 2020) including profit & loss and balance sheet
  • Aged debtors and creditors as of end February 2020
  • Last six months bank statements – business and personal – if you are applying a to bank other than the one you currently bank with
  • Details of your personal assets, liabilities, income and expenditure
  • Details of any Time to Pay arrangements with HMRC and/or a snapshot of your HMRC status for PAYE, VAT and corporation tax
  • What, if any, security is being offered?
  • Details of how the amount requested has been calculated and an impact statement of how Covid-19 is affecting your business i.e. is the business closed? What wages need paying? Details of ongoing expenses
  • What other options have been explored? E.g. furlough, rate relief, time to pay arrangements etc
  • When the pandemic is resolved, how long do you believe it will take you to start recovery? What challenges will you face e.g. future loss of contracts/staff availability.
  • What changes is the business making in the short to medium term to help drive business performance back to either pre virus levels or beyond?

It is important to note that every lender will have a different application form and have different debt service level requirements.

Once again, if you require our help with this, please do get in touch.