Publication

Loan guarantee schemes in the UK: What have we learnt? SOTA Review No 28

Published: 21 May 2019

Loan guarantee schemes are the most pervasive and long-standing means of intervening in capital markets to support small business lending in the world. They are popular with small businesses, easy to understand, easy to administer, and allow large numbers of credit constrained small business to access loans that they would have struggled to get. Yet take-up of UK loan guarantees over its 38 year scheme history has varied dramatically. In this review we consider just why, despite its general popularity, the UK scheme has had such a variable past, and show just how sensitive demand for guaranteed loans is to the nuances of the schemes rules.

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