Commercial Loans Inaccessible for UK Businesses

In its report published on October 11th, Syscap, UK-based independent financial provider, said that 38% of businesses in Great Britain found it barely possible to access bank loans.

As such, only 9% of those questioned said that their ability to get a bank loan improved in the past year. This statement comes at odds with the efforts of the British government to increase commercial lending.

As many as 27% of respondents said that they faced a desperate need in bank loans in the past quarter, whereas 14% of businesses confirmed that loans became harder to obtain in Q3 2010.

Commenting on the findings, Syscap chief executive Mr. White said the proportion of companies, which say they are unable to access lending, is worrying and means that the UK banking market is still believed to be in the state of deterioration. He highlighted that this could be “the legacy of bad debts.”

It is also important to note that those businesses that did obtain loans from UK banks still had to pay large arrangement fees.