Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what due diligence he carried out when considering whether Greensill Capital should be an accredited lender under the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

The decision to accredit Greensill Capital was made independently and in accordance with the British Business Bank’s (Bank) usual procedures. The Bank ran an accreditation process for lenders to participate in the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), which included due consideration of whether a prospective lender met the criteria set out in the CLBILS Request for Proposals (a publicly available document).

The criteria included requirements such as the ability to demonstrate a track record of lending to larger enterprises, provision of evidence based forecasts, the ability to demonstrate that it has sufficient capital available to meet their lending forecasts, a viable business model, robust operations and systems, the proposed lending will not have unreasonable lender levied fees and interest, and that the lender has all the necessary regulations, licences, authorisations and permissions to operate the scheme.

At the point of accreditation and based on the information provided to it, the Bank considered that Greensill Capital met the required criteria.