Business loans: the future is bright

Do you run a sustainable business? You may be able to take advantage of Virgin Money’s loans that make borrowing cheaper for sustainable businesses. We are proud to offer sustainability-linked loans in the SME space.

We worked with the Future-Fit Foundation to come up with the methodology behind these new loans. Businesses will have to answer a series of questions, which will assess their current sustainability performance and provide guidance to make further progress. This questionnaire will give businesses an objective assessment of how they’re doing in terms of sustainability.

For customers borrowing at least £250,000 with a sufficiently strong assessment¹, the SLLs provided by Virgin Money will have reduced or no arrangement fee². We have committed that 10% of business lending balances will be to firms driving environmental and social change³.

Scott McFarlane, sustainability lead for Business Bank, Virgin Money, said: “While businesses overwhelmingly recognise the importance of sustainability, it is challenging to translate good intentions into a clear plan and are worried about the cost and time involved in implementing a sustainability change.

“This is why we partnered with Future-Fit Foundation, to help SMEs and other businesses manage and measure sustainability. The Sustainable Business Coach enables us to identify those businesses with capabilities that proactively drive other companies or consumers to create a more sustainable society. The loans will help these companies deliver growth ambitions and help relieve some of the cost pressure. We firmly believe that we, and other banks, have a duty to direct capital responsibly.”

Visit the Sustainable Business Coach to find out more.

^[1]SLL scoring framework is determined by the Sustainable Business Coach.

^[2]Maximum arrangement fee discount to our normal pricing for a comparable loan is 1.50%.

^[3]Where customers’ core goods or services (>50% revenue) drives social or environmental change, determined by ‘Positive Impacts’ contained within the Sustainable Business Coach.