Advising clients on repayment options for BBLS?

As I’m sure you all know, the BBLS closed to new applications and top-up applications on 31 March 2021.  However, many clients may have forgotten that the initial holiday (when no repayments had to be made) was only for 12-months from the start of the loan … so making those first repayments will recently have become due (or be about to be so).

Not all of them are likely to be aware that they can choose to use the government’s Pay as You Grow initiative, which gives firms the option to: extend the length of their loan from six to ten years; make interest-only payments for six months; or pause repayments entirely for up to six months.  But these options are not an automatic ‘right’, the businesses has to ask the lender (bank) for more time to repay their BBLS loans via one of those options.

Although the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has urged banks to contact their customers ‘in order to make them aware of Pay as You Grow’ (and how to make best use of it), it might be a conversation best initiated by you – before either your client is confused by messages from the bank, or simply leaves it too late?