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Big banks failing to hit business lending targets

According to Midgley Snelling accountants, the UK’s big banks are not meeting targets for lending to smaller businesses, new figures have shown.

According to the Bank of England’s first quarterly survey of progress under the Project Merlin deal, banks met their overall business lending target, but fell short of their target for helping small companies by around £2 billion in the first three months of 2011.

Peter Bond, partner at Midgley Snelling, said: “Project Merlin was designed to make business finance more readily available, particularly to SMEs which often face the most difficulty in obtaining funding.

“Under agreement signed as part of the project, Britain’s five major banks – HSBC, Santander, Barclays, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland – promised to loan around £190 billion this year, with at least £76 billion to smaller firms”.

According to current estimates, the amount lent so far is £47 billion, of which £17 billion went to SMEs.

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