Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 12 December 2018
73. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Finance the reason €675 million of Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland funding has as of December 2016 gone to the pillar banks (details supplied) and only 11% of its drawn down lending has gone to working capital for SMEs in view of the fact that it was established to lend to SMEs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52388/18]
View answerThe Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, the SBCI, is Ireland’s national promotional institution. Its strategic mission is to increase the availability of appropriately priced, flexible funding to viable Irish SMEs by delivering effective financial supports to Irish SMEs that address failures in the Irish credit market, while encouraging competition and innovation and ensuring the efficient use of available EU resources. The SBCI does not provide funding directly to small businesses, rather it operates through partner finance providers, known as on-lenders. The SBCI currently has three bank and three non-bank on-lenders.
The SBCI initially provided funding to pillar banks in order to take advantage of their broad existing customer bases and to enable as wide a distribution as possible of lower costs loans to SMEs.
Since December 2016 the SBCI has also provided to date over €250 million of funding to non-bank finance providers to help increase competition in the SME finance market in Ireland. The SBCI’s funding is deployed across a variety of products, including working capital as well as asset financing, leasing and invoice discounting, to give a range of loan options for SMEs. Since it began its activities in March 2015, to the end of March 2018, a total of €952 million SBCI supported loans have been drawn down by eligible SMEs, 25% of which were for working capital purposes.
