The government has given banks extra time to grant state-backed loans to medium-sized and larger businesses in an extension of Covid-19, in what could signal an extension of the schemes beyond this year.

The administrators of the scheme, the British Business Bank, wrote to accredited lenders last week to say that applications for the coronavirus business interruption loans scheme (CBILS) had to be in by 30 September, but that they had two more months to consider the cases – pushing the date of the final approval to 30 November.

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The deadline for approving large CBILS (CLBILS) has been set for 31 December. The business bank said that it had provided “an update clarifying the closing of applications”.

According to the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB), some lenders interpreted this as an extension of the loans, which could be the first step in a move to keep the schemes open into next year.

When the government set up the schemes, it said that each was temporary and would last six months. The deadline for CBILS was set for 30 September, while the cut-off for the CLBILS scheme was 20 October.

Government published statistics show over 1.2m businesses have to date benefitted from loans and guarantees worth £52.65bn through schemes delivered by the BBB. This includes 1,174,854 Bounce Back Loans worth over £35bn, 60,409 facilities worth almost £13.7bn through CBILS and 516 facilities worth £3.5bn through the CLBILS.

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The BBB said it continues to review applications from a wide range of lender types – from PRA-regulated banks, to platform lenders, debt funds, invoice finance lenders, asset finance lenders and responsible finance lenders.

On 19 August, the BBB announced that it had approved BLG Development Finance, Conister, RM Funds and Western Union Business Solutions for accreditation for CBILS.

Under the scheme, CBILS lenders are able to provide finance to smaller businesses with turnover of up to £45m that are suffering disruption to their cashflow due to lost or deferred revenues during the Covid-19 outbreak.