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HSBC launches £8bn fund for small businesses

HSBC, the UK’s largest bank, has announced a new national fund worth £8bn, which will be allocated in 43 local tranches across the country.

The bank will also be running more than 300 workshops nationwide with the aim of supporting 10,000 businesses - from startups to established firms looking to grow.

In addition to the fund, a loan promotion will waive arrangement and security fees on all business loans worth between £1,000 and £300,000.

The funding package will be accessible to SMEs in:

• Manchester (£400m fund)
• West Yorks (£400m fund)
• Birmingham (£400m fund)
• Tyne Tees (£150m fund)
• Liverpool and Cheshire (£150m fund)
• Scotland (£400m fund)
• Bristol and Bath (£150m fund)
• Cambridge (£150m fund)
• London (£2.1bn fund)
• Kent and Thames Gateway (£150m fund)

According to HSBC, 85%of business loan applications filed with the bank are approved. While it sees 5,900 SMEs who open accounts with HSBC each month (2014).

Ian Stuart, HSBC’s head of UK commercial banking, told the Telegrah he had seen a rise in business applications last year: “We want to make it as simple as we can for businesses to take their next step and that’s why we’ve taken out fees and charges.

“It’s open to any business, although we’re always keen to help out firms that manufacture here, as it’s important to the UK economy.”

However,HSBC has recently discussed proposals to move its head office out of London and relocate main operations abroad. Chief executive Stuart Gulliver said: “It’s going to take us a few months [to decide], not years,”

“It’s quite hard to hire people in Guangzhou and explain to them why their compensation has to be constrained [by what happens in the UK], particularly when US and others don’t have to,”

Last year, HSBC was censured by competition authorities for wrongly requiring SMEs to open a current account in order to secure loans. The bank also faced an investigation from the FCAsurrounding its forex habits and its involvement in ‘currency rigging’

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .