Business loans: the future is green

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

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 help companies to make further progress. This questionnaire will give businesses an objective assessment of how they’re doing in terms of sustainability.

For eligible customers borrowing at least £250,000 with a sufficiently strong assessment, the SLLs provided by Virgin Money will have no arrangement fee. We have committed that 5 per cent of all our business loans will be to firms driving environmental and social change by September 2022.

Graeme Sands, corporate and mid-market director, Virgin Money, said: “While businesses overwhelmingly recognise the importance of sustainability, many – especially SMEs – struggle to translate good intentions into a clear plan and are worried about the cost and time involved in implementing an ESG programme.

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

Virgin Money also recently announced a partnership with Virgin StartUp to help businesses that are just starting out.

Visit Virgin Money to find out more.