Banks miss leding target

Not quite magic then…? project Merlin was meant to encourage/coerce the big five lenders into lending more to small businesses.  However they fell short by £1bn in the first 6 months of the year.

In fairness they apparently lent £37bn- although I do wonder on some of these numbers- how much of this is totally new money… and how much is say an old loan ( existing) – repaid and a new loan created over a different term/interest rate- perhaps clearing an overdraft at the same time- in this case there would ne no ‘ new’ debt but the stats would suggest there was.

Certainly as commercial brokers we get a feel for what each lender is able to do and several of the lenders … own staff freely admit to us they are lending very little/ none of through brokers and very hard to get deals agreed.  Basically I am not suprised the target was missed but am more suprised by how close they came….

2nd half of the year always used to be stronger for loans so they may well still make their targets by the year end- however- everyone seems to be agreed that small businesses are not getting the credit they need and with all the banking chaos from last week its doubtful that matters wilkl improve much this year targets or not.