Barclays Introduces Support Package To Help UK SMBs

To assist with Britain’s economic recovery on a local level, Barclays is offering a customized support program to local companies. The package is initially geared toward Barclays’ Rebuilding Thriving Local Economies (RTLE) pilot regions, which include Great Yarmouth, Taunton Deane, Kilmarnock and Bury, according to an announcement.

Barclays says the RTLE program will offer a spectrum of support to communities and companies, as the bank works with officials in education, commerce and government to offer hands-on skills at a local level.

“Now more than ever, it’s imperative that we support business growth across the country. We’ve seen the impact of the pandemic on small and medium-sized businesses and now is the time to provide important skills, mentoring and funding advice so that we can support local economies to recover and thrive,” Hannah Bernard, head of business banking at Barclays, said in the announcement.

The RTLE program is providing companies with a package of support as its first step in 2021, which comes with access to the Back to Business Programme and the Funding Readiness program.

The Back to Business Program is a tailored and complimentary digital toolkit for companies that was developed in conjunction with the Cambridge Judge Business School. It comes with more than 15 hours of content that was created with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in mind. Those who take part in the program will be taught how to evaluate the wellness of a company, how to make a resilience roadmap for their company and how to control cash flow.

In addition, the Funding Readiness program is meant to explain which funding opportunities are available to those who start companies and offer the skills in addition to expertise required to financially support business growth.

The news comes as the British economy contracted 9.9 percent last year, the worst year on record as of 1709, according to a Feb. 12 report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).