As the UK Government’s national economic development bank, our mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK. In doing so, we help capture the economic value of innovation for the UK and create jobs and prosperity for people across the country. With a mainly commercial approach that delivers a return for taxpayers, the Bank’s goal is to catalyse private markets to broaden the range of choice for smaller businesses seeking finance.

The Government sees the Bank as being at the heart of its growth agenda. It has therefore tasked us to deliver a step change in how UK smaller businesses are financed, increasing the scale and impact of our provision. This step change will have a significant impact on the economy – a narrowing of the scaleup financing gap, ensuring greater innovation, investment and opportunity across the country and, importantly, anchoring our most promising companies here in the UK through greater and more targeted direct investment.

With a permanent financial capacity of £25.6 billion – and new freedoms to allocate capital more flexibly – we will deliver against four strategic objectives:

  1. Supporting our most promising businesses in the Industrial Strategy priority sectors to scale and stay here
  2. Making finance markets work better for smaller businesses
  3. Unlocking the potential in people and places
  4. Mobilising institutional capital at scale

Through our Investment business, we invest in funds and directly in companies, crowding in private capital to the venture and growth markets that fuel innovative companies’ growth. This helps the globally competitive businesses of the future to access the scale-up capital they need to grow in the UK.

Through our Banking business, we increase lending to businesses through start-up loans for new entrepreneurs and by using government-backed guarantees and other financial instruments to reduce risk and increase capacity for finance providers so that they offer loans to a much wider range of businesses.

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