Sign in Subscribe
News

More capital to lend, less economy to lend into

The constraint on UK B2B credit just moved: capital is no longer the limit on lending — underwriting judgment is.

Kirk Donohoe

Kirk Donohoe

— 22 min read
Share
More capital to lend, less economy to lend into

UK B2B credit and lending news digest, 5–11 July 2026

Summary

New this week: the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee published its July Financial Stability Report on 7 July alongside the next stage of its bank capital framework review — a package that could release additional lending capacity at the five largest UK banks, with NatWest and Lloyds seen best placed to benefit from changes to core capital composition and Barclays and Santander UK from the leverage framework.(1)(2)(3)

The second thread is the real economy that extra capacity would lend into. The June construction PMI came in at 38.4 — barely up from May’s six-year low of 38.2 — with housebuilding recording its sharpest decline of 2026 and civil engineering its steepest fall since April 2020.(4) Set against that, the first positive merchant print in months: builders’ merchant volumes rose 2.1% year on year in May on the sector index — but only because prices fell 2.1%, leaving value sales flat.(5) Early June insolvency reads eased (around 5% lower year on year, with the second quarter roughly 16% below the first),(6) yet the leading indicators — late-payment notifications to credit insurers, distress concentrated in construction, wholesale and hospitality — did not move with them.(6)(7)

The third thread: specialist credit supply continues to expand in this picture. Allica waived arrangement fees on commercial mortgages of £750,000 and above and lifted its maximum LTV to 77.5% on larger loans; Shawbrook wrote new asset-based lending; and Lendable priced a £500m securitisation — term funding markets are open for UK non-bank lenders even in a quiet week for fintech equity.(8)(9)(10)(11) Beneath the headlines the private funding lines kept flowing: MS Lending Group upsized to £230m with Pollen Street, Hope Capital to £75m with Triple Point.(33)(34)

The consequence of the combination: policy is preparing to hand banks more lending capacity in the same week the forward indicators for the largest B2B credit ecosystem — construction and its supply chain — weakened again. Capital availability is no longer the binding constraint on UK B2B credit; underwriting discipline is. The books that grow from here grow into a softer real economy, and the risk accrues after onboarding, on the live accounts.

1. Key developments

  • Bank capital framework review opens the door to released lending capacity. The FPC’s July Financial Stability Report (7 July) found the UK banking system well capitalised and able to lend through severe stress, and set out the next stage of the capital framework review expected to free up capacity at Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Santander UK. The same report flagged that vulnerabilities in risky credit — including private credit — have in some cases intensified since December, and put UK banks’ exposure to private-market funds and highly leveraged, sponsor-backed corporates at £173bn, around 8% of wholesale committed limits.(1)(2)(3)
  • Construction stays on the floor. June construction PMI 38.4 (May: 38.2, a six-year low). Housebuilding fell at its sharpest pace of 2026, civil engineering at its steepest since April 2020 on delayed infrastructure work and fewer public tenders; employment fell for an eighteenth consecutive month, though input-price pressure eased and new orders hit a three-month high.(4)
  • Merchant volumes turn positive — on falling prices. Builders’ merchant total value sales in May were flat year on year (0.0%) as volumes rose 2.1% and prices fell 2.1%; like-for-like value sales were up 5.0% with one less trading day. Renewables & water saving led (+23.4%); heavy building materials slipped (−0.4%) and workwear was weakest (−7.0%).(5)
  • June insolvencies eased on early reads. Around 2,230 UK businesses entered insolvency in June, roughly 5% lower year on year and month on month, with Q2 about 16% below Q1. Construction (358), wholesale and retail (283) and accommodation & food service (298, up on the month) still led the table. The official Insolvency Service June release lands 14 July.(6)
  • Specialists kept expanding. Allica waived arrangement fees on commercial mortgages of £750k+ (to 30 September) and raised maximum LTV to 77.5% on loans of £3m and above; Shawbrook wrote an £11m asset-based facility for a services business and lifted commercial bridging LTVs; Lendable raised £500m in the securitisation market; MS Lending Group and Hope Capital upsized funding lines to £230m and £75m.(8)(9)(10)(33)(34)(36)
  • BNPL regulation goes live Tuesday. Formal FCA regulation of deferred payment credit takes effect on 15 July — affordability checks, Consumer Duty and Ombudsman access arrive for consumer pay-later, leaving B2B trade credit and pay-later outside the new perimeter and operating under a clearly separated regime.(16)

2. Market signals

Credit quality and risk. The insolvency headline is easing — early June reads down around 5% year on year(6) — but it remains the lagging number, and the leading signals didn’t follow it down. Late-payment notifications to trade-credit insurers keep rising ahead of any claims spike, a pattern that historically leads claims by two to three quarters, even as formal claims stay subdued.(7) The FPC added a new layer to the risk map: debt-servicing pressure is expected to build on smaller, more leveraged firms reliant on private credit or leveraged loans as energy costs and borrowing rates bite, and investor sentiment in parts of private credit had already weakened on asset-quality, valuation and liquidity concerns.(1) The quality question this quarter is not the insolvency print; it is how the receivables and leveraged-SME layers behave underneath it.

Credit supply and lending conditions. Supply keeps loosening from three directions at once: policy (the capital framework review), the high street (SME gross lending hit a post-pandemic high of £5.3bn in Q1, up 16% year on year, with lending to the smallest businesses up 51%),(12) and the specialist end (Allica cutting the cost of borrowing at the point of application, Shawbrook adding ABL capacity, asset finance running 14% up in April with May figures due mid-month).(8)(9)(28) The Bank’s Q2 Credit Conditions Survey (published 2 July) adds the first counter-note to that run: lenders reported credit availability to small and medium businesses slightly decreased in Q2, the balance on small-business loan approvals turned negative for the first time in several quarters, and overall SME demand for lending fell — while small businesses’ demand for unsecured and credit-card borrowing rose sharply. (29) Falling term-loan demand alongside rising card and unsecured demand is a working-capital signature, not a growth one. The constraints that remain are price and structure, not headline appetite: markets lean toward Bank Rate holding at 3.75% for the rest of the year, and the war premium that entered swap rates in the spring has not fully unwound, even with oil back around pre-conflict levels, as US–Iran talks continue.(13)(14)(15)

3. Where risk is building

  • Construction’s supply chain — the V1 core. A June PMI of 38.4, an eighteenth straight month of falling employment, and civil engineering at its weakest since April 2020 is a forward order-book signal for every materials manufacturer, distributor and merchant selling into the sector on trade terms.(4) The insolvency table still leads with construction (358 in June),(6) and Build UK’s data holds the sector at the economy’s worst late-payment gap — roughly 53 days on average against typical 30-day terms below the Tier 1s.(27) The exposure sits in the sub-tiers’ open trade accounts, not in the headline contractors.
  • Trade-account providers — volume up, cash flat. The May merchant print looks like relief but reads like risk from the creditor’s side: volumes +2.1% with prices −2.1% means more product going out the door on account for the same cash through the till.(5) A merchant’s physical credit exposure grew in May even though its revenue didn’t — and it grew against customer sectors that lead the distress tables. Materials-price deflation flatters volume while quietly thinning the margin that absorbs bad debt.
  • Hospitality and food service. Accommodation & food service insolvencies rose month on month (298 in June) against an overall falling market — the one major sector moving the wrong way through the early summer, as April’s wage, rates and energy step-ups continue to work through.(6) For wholesalers supplying the sector on account, and for lenders exposed to it, the counter-cyclical direction is the tell.
  • Leveraged SMEs in the private-credit layer. The FPC’s read — intensifying vulnerabilities, weakened investor sentiment, £173bn of bank exposure to the private-market complex — lands hardest on smaller, heavily levered borrowers whose debt service reprices as facilities roll.(1) This is the least visible layer of UK B2B credit, and this week the central bank said so in print.

4. Friction signals and where credit is failing

No lender announced a public pullback this week; the friction remains structural and priced-in rather than declared.

  • The rate-relief channel closed for the year. As of early July, markets expect Bank Rate to hold at 3.75% through year-end — the two cuts priced at the start of 2026 are gone, and two-year swaps still sit well above their pre-conflict level.(13)(14)(15) Facilities and deals underwritten last winter on the assumption of cheaper money by autumn are the quiet casualty: the repricing that never arrived as a cut is itself a tightening.
  • Public-sector demand is failing upstream. Civil engineering’s steepest fall since April 2020 came with reports of delayed infrastructure work and fewer public tenders(4) — deals not happening at the top of the chain, which the sub-tiers feel as thinner order books two quarters out.
  • Small-business availability slipped in the measured data. Behind the expansionary headlines, the Q2 Credit Conditions Survey recorded a slight decrease in credit availability to small and medium businesses and a negative balance on small-business approvals — modest moves, but the first measured tightening at the small end in several quarters, landing before any released bank capital arrives.(29)
  • Working capital stays routed away from the high street. The big-bank exit from SME invoice factoring keeps pushing receivables-rich firms to specialists and fintechs, often at higher cost — a structural gap that widens in exactly the sectors where debtor days are stretching. The community-lender end sees the same picture: BCRS cited continued strong demand from businesses unable to access finance through mainstream channels as it strengthened its credit function.(22)
  • Fraud keeps raising the cost of saying yes. Cifas data shows evasion of payment up 22%, driven by loan, asset-finance and card applications made with no intent to repay, and 18% of employees admitting they would sell company login credentials.(19) Direction: First-party fraud is rising in an expanding SME lending market. Exposure: this year’s fast-growing unsecured and small-ticket books. Consequence: tighter KYB at onboarding, upward pressure on risk-based pricing in smaller facilities, and 2026-vintage loss assumptions that warrant early review rather than end-of-year discovery.

5. Who is doing what

Bank behaviour layer and the big four. The week’s material bank story was regulatory, not behavioural: all four sit inside the capital framework review, with analysts placing NatWest and Lloyds as the biggest beneficiaries of changes to core capital composition and Barclays among the better placed on the leverage framework.(3) This week: NatWest named James Gawn CTO of its Mettle and Boxed units — continued investment in the SME digital banking stack. (23) Lloyds’ reported interest in acquiring Aldermore, which emerged in late June, stands as the live consolidation thread.(18) Barclays showed no new lending-appetite signal this week — prior stance holds. HSBC UK likewise held a prior stance, with its NACFB headline sponsorship for 2026/27 keeping the broker-channel commitment visible.(24) None of the four changed headline appetite; the capacity story is being written for them by the regulator.

Lenders tightening. No lender publicly tightened its appetite this week. The tightening that exists is embedded — the structural absence of high-street working capital and the rate-relief channel staying shut.(13)

Lenders expanding. Allica made the week’s clearest expansion move: arrangement fees waived on owner-occupier and commercial investment mortgages of £750k+ and specialist BTL of £1.5m+ for applications to 30 September, with maximum LTV lifted to 77.5% on commercial mortgages of £3m and above — a price-and-structure play for broker-introduced business.(8) Shawbrook wrote an £11m asset-based lending facility for a services business, lifted its maximum LTV on eligible commercial bridging to 75%, and strengthened its board with Vicky Davies OBE as independent NED from November.(9)(36)(46) Lendable priced a £500m securitisation backed by personal loans — a consumer book, but the clearest evidence this week that sterling term-funding markets remain open to UK fintech lenders at size. (10) Close Brothers re-rated as Shore Capital moved to buy with motor-finance fears “overdone” — sentiment recovering around the specialist lending model, not new appetite.(17) Klarna failed to establish a Utah-chartered industrial bank in the US — the BNPL end continuing to build banking infrastructure. (23) Further down the specialist stack, capacity kept being added: MS Lending Group secured a £230m upsized funding line from Pollen Street Capital, having lent more than £600m since its 2021 launch;(33) Hope Capital renewed and upsized its Triple Point senior line by £30m to £75m and cut bridging rates;(34) DF Capital renewed its British Business Bank ENABLE Guarantee to support up to £350m of inventory-finance lending through 2028;(35) and Roma Finance extended from bridging into commercial mortgages of up to £2m.(37) Paragon completed the sale of its Specialist Fleet Services subsidiary, adding around £40m to net tangible assets — portfolio focus, not retreat;(56) OakNorth kept its US push visible with a $50m Charlotte office facility. (57)

Alternative lenders and challengers. Equity fundraising across the fintech lending universe was quiet — a slow week globally, with around $350m raised across 10 deals — and there was no new capital-markets issuance from the major UK alternative lenders beyond Lendable’s trade. (10)(11) The action was in embedded finance and M&A instead. Wayflyer made its largest acquisition to date, buying Dublin analytics platform Conjura to sharpen AI-driven funding decisions;(38) YouLend’s Just Eat Takeaway partnership crossed €150m of restaurant financing across seven European markets, with repeat merchants now outweighing first-timers;(39) Storfund embedded its Daily Advance seller financing on Castorama’s French marketplace — its first launch inside the Kingfisher group, and a direct read into built-world B2B commerce;(40) and Banxware switched on seller financing of up to €5m on Otto, Germany’s second-largest marketplace.(41) A late-June move that belongs in this picture: Nordic Capital agreed to acquire Liberis and merge it with Sweden’s Qred, creating a ~53,000-customer SMB financing platform across 17 countries. (42) iwoca, Capital on Tap and Funding Circle made no new funding moves; after last month’s $155m Series D, Allica’s news this week was product, not capital. The clearest expansion at the embedded end came from the continent: Aria, the invoice-financing infrastructure behind B2B marketplaces, ERPs and vertical SaaS platforms, extended its Series A to €22m and secured a €240m debt facility to scale invoice financing across Europe, having financed €1.5bn of invoices since 2020 — embedded trade credit adding capacity just as UK B2B pay-later enters its post-regulation shape.(31) The motor-finance ruling continues to reshape the specialist fringe, with Startline and Blue Motor Finance seen as sale prospects — consolidation, again, as the livelier thread at the edge of the market.(18)

6. Capital and funding

The structural event is the capital framework review itself: a central bank preparing to hand back capacity is the cheapest funding a bank can get, and it arrives with the FPC’s own caveat attached — the system is resilient, but risky credit markets, private credit included, are carrying intensified vulnerabilities in leverage, valuation and liquidity.(1)(2) The same week, practitioner reporting captured private credit’s mood precisely: returns from the rebound are “not jumping off the pages”.(25)

Rates and pricing: oil is back around pre-conflict levels as US–Iran talks continue, and market metrics are gradually following — but the path is a hold, not a cut. Markets lean toward 3.75% through year-end, with the June MPC minutes showing two members voting for a rise and two-year OIS still roughly 70 basis points above pre-war levels. (13)(14)(15) Directionally: funding is stable but structurally dearer than the spring’s cut-off window, and it is risk-selective — Lendable’s £500m shows the securitisation market open at size for proven books, while the broader fintech funding week was one of the quietest of the year.(10)(11)

The same pattern recurs one layer down: private credit continues to fund specialist lenders even as the FPC frets about the asset class. Pollen Street’s upsized £230m line to MS Lending Group and Triple Point’s £75m to Hope Capital landed this week;(33)(34) Funding 365 added a £300m facility in late June on the back of its Balbec Capital acquisition;(43) Beechbrook Capital held a first close on its £250m-target UK SME Credit IV fund for non-sponsored SMEs;(44) and White Oak launched a senior-secured strategy targeting up to £1.5bn for UK reindustrialisation. (45) The capital keeps arriving one level below the banks — precisely the layer the FSR flagged as hardest to see. (1)

Private credit and debt funds: the prior read holds and hardened this week — the FPC put a number (£173bn) on bank exposure to the private-market complex, and flagged smaller leveraged corporates as the pressure point as facilities reprice. (1)

7. People moves and leadership signals

  • Rachel Davies joined BCRS Business Loans as head of credit (announced 9 July) — a community development lender strengthening its credit function explicitly because demand from businesses turned away by mainstream channels keeps rising.(22)
  • James Gawn was named CTO of Mettle and NatWest Boxed, after three years as engineering director across both — continuity investment in the SME digital banking and embedded-finance stack.(23)
  • Gary Harding was selected as president and CEO of Klarna Bank USA as Klarna filed its Utah industrial bank applications — the BNPL major hiring conventional banking leadership.(23)
  • Kuba Fast was appointed to head Revolut’s European banking entity — the challenger consolidating leadership of its European banking perimeter as its UK bank beds in.(32)
  • Vicky Davies OBE, formerly CEO of Danske Bank UK, joins the Shawbrook Group and Shawbrook Bank boards as an independent non-executive director, effective 1 November.(46)
  • Jason Hurwitz was appointed Group CEO of Star Asset Finance as Steve Swift steps back ahead of retirement — leadership renewal in the consolidating asset-finance mid-market.(47)
  • Andrew Charnley was appointed Group CEO of Sancus Lending, succeeding Rory Mepham.(48)
  • Tamsin Todd joined the Funding Circle board as an independent NED, effective 13 July.(49)
  • Below board level, the hiring signal stayed expansionary: Skipton Business Finance added a Birmingham relationship manager to grow its Midlands invoice-finance presence. (50)
  • Open seats — where the market is hiring credit and risk. Paragon is recruiting a Head of Credit for its bridging finance business, with ownership of the credit risk framework;(58) Shawbrook posted a Director of Development & Construction Risk role on 10 July alongside an ABL client-audit director — building real-estate risk capability in the same week it raised bridging LTVs;(59) and the fintech end is stocking its credit benches, with iwoca and YouLend hiring senior credit-risk analysts and Capital on Tap recruiting across underwriting, fraud analytics and a deputy MLRO.(60)(61)(62) Close Brothers’ recently advertised group Head of Credit seat — a Credit Committee role — has just come off the market.(63) Senior credit hiring concentrated in property risk and fraud-adjacent roles is its own read on where books are growing.
  • The forward signal stands: restructuring and credit-function hiring continues to run ahead of the falling insolvency headline — firms staffing for the work the leading indicators point to, not the work the lagging print shows.

8. From the industry

Brokers first. The broker channel’s week was about the cost of the deal, not the availability of one. Allica’s fee waiver and higher LTV ceiling is aimed squarely at broker-introduced commercial mortgage business — specialists competing on entry cost while headline rates hold.(8) The NACFB calendar turns to its summer party and the late-July Commercial Broker Awards shortlist, with Close Brothers completing the 18-strong front-row Patron roster — a channel that keeps adding lender capacity even as roughly a third of broker clients arrive having been declined elsewhere.(24) Easier to place this week: sub-75% LTV specialist property, smaller asset-finance and working-capital deals, and larger commercial mortgages with the fee taken out. Harder: higher-LTV commercial, infrastructure-adjacent construction, and the working capital the high street no longer writes. Specialist repricing rolled on underneath: Landbay, Molo and ModaMortgages all cut buy-to-let pricing (51)(52) new entrant Afin Bank launched regulated bridging to 80% LTV,(53) and Atelier posted its strongest lending month since its 2019 launch (£84m in June)(54) — capacity still being added across the specialist channel, at lower price.

Trade-account providers and trade credit. This is the week’s most instructive real-economy read. On the surface, the sector index improved: merchant volumes up 2.1% year on year in May, the first meaningful positive print of 2026, with renewables (+23.4%), landscaping (+1.9%) and timber (+1.4%) leading.(5) Underneath, prices fell 2.1%, so value sales were flat — meaning merchants shipped more product on trade terms without collecting more cash, into customer sectors that still top the insolvency tables and against a June construction PMI of 38.4 that says the forward book weakens from here.(4)(5)(6) The corporates are positioning accordingly: Grafton is leaning on acquisitions — Cygnum’s timber-frame business completed in March — to support full-year guidance, and Booker locked prices on 600+ lines until 8 September, wholesale margin defence into soft demand.(20)(21) For a trade-account provider, the operational read is precise: when volume grows and value doesn’t, the receivables book grows in units of exposure while the margin cushion that absorbs write-offs thins. The customer that passed onboarding in the spring and is now stretching payment into a 38.4-PMI summer is the exposure that matters — and it is visible in payment behaviour months before it appears in any insolvency print. Onboarding KYB catches none of that; continuous monitoring of the live book does.

Credit insurance. The insurers’ stance is unchanged and still leading: late-payment notifications rising across several sectors ahead of claims, formal claims subdued, appetite maintained with underwriting focused on portfolio quality rather than broad repricing.(7) The operational implication holds from prior weeks — credit teams leaning on insured limits in hospitality, smaller construction trades and import-heavy wholesale should be stress-testing against sector-level trimming, because cover tightens sector-by-sector first and announcement-by-announcement never. A complementary strain signal from the premium-finance channel: Premium Credit’s research shows SMEs increasingly trimming or cancelling business insurance, with 42% expecting underinsurance to worsen over the year ahead — an under-insured customer base makes open trade-account exposure heavier, not lighter.(55)

Regulation and payments. Two threads move next week: BNPL’s 15 July go-live formalises the split between regulated consumer pay-later and unregulated B2B trade credit — creating a cleaner operating environment for B2B pay-later providers (Kriya, Mondu, Two) and for every trade creditor offering deferred terms.(16) And the Commercial Payments Bill continues through Parliament, carrying the 60-day maximum payment terms, statutory 8% interest and the enforcement-empowered Small Business Commissioner — layered on top of the Commissioner’s live Fair Payment Code, whose gold, silver and bronze tiers already benchmark who pays within 30 and 60 days. (26) The direction of travel on payment behaviour is regulatory, explicit, and favourable to suppliers who can evidence their book.

Where Grand fits. As well as powering underwriting for some of the most forward-leaning B2B lenders, Grand sits exactly in this week’s gap for trade-account providers: the credit check happens at onboarding, but May’s numbers show exposure building afterwards — more goods on account, flat cash, customers slowing. Continuous monitoring of live trade accounts is what catches the stretch between the clean check and the write-off. See the latest at heygrand.com.

9. What this means

Where risk is rising: in construction’s sub-tiers and supply chain, where a 38.4 PMI and delayed public work meet the economy’s worst payment gap;(4)(27) in merchant and wholesale receivables books that grew in units while cash stood still;(5) in hospitality, the one sector whose failures rose through June;(6) and in the leveraged-SME layer the FPC just flagged in print.(1)

Where credit is flowing — and where it’s stuck: flowing through the high street into SMEs at a post-pandemic high, through specialists cutting fees and adding LTV, and through a securitisation market open at £500m size;(8)(10)(12) stuck in high-LTV commercial property, bank-channel working capital, and any deal priced on a rate cut that is no longer coming.(13)

Who’s tightening vs expanding: no one tightened by announcement, but the Q2 Credit Conditions Survey measured a slight tightening at the small-business end — availability down, the approvals balance negative;(29) Allica, Shawbrook and the asset-finance channel expanded by action; the big four held stance while the regulator drafts them more capacity.(3)(8)(9) The expansion is real, the tightening is quiet and measured rather than declared, and both are happening at once.

What genuinely changed this week: the constraint moved. With the capital framework review live, the limiting factor on UK B2B credit is no longer how much banks can lend but what is safe to lend into — and the week’s real-economy data answered that question with a construction floor, deflation-flattered merchant volumes, and a central bank warning on the leveraged end. Books grown from here are grown on underwriting judgment, not capital headroom.(1)(4)(5)

10. Operator actions

Where the week’s signals appear to be landing for credit operators — observations on the direction of travel, not recommendations.

  • On capital: the framework review points toward more lending capacity, not better credit quality — the read across credit teams is that released capital makes disciplined underwriting more valuable, not less, since the marginal loan it funds is written into a softening real economy.(1)(3)
  • On construction exposure: a 38.4 PMI with civil engineering at a six-year low sits oddly beside an easing insolvency print; the signal points toward reviewing construction-chain limits on the forward indicator rather than waiting for the lagging one.(4)(6)
  • On trade accounts: volume growth on falling prices reads as greater exposure for the same revenue; the shift observed is toward tracking units shipped on account and cash collected as separate lines, and toward continuous monitoring of live accounts through the summer rather than annual rechecks.(5)
  • On funding costs: with a hold priced through year-end, facilities and covenant structures written on spring cut expectations look more like repricing already due than future risk.(13)(15)
  • On fraud: payment evasion up 22% in a fast-growing, small-ticket lending market points to front-loading KYB and revisiting 2026-vintage loss assumptions early, while the loans are young.(19)

11. Week ahead

  • 14 July — Insolvency Service, company insolvencies June (official): tests whether the early-read 5% easing holds in the official data, and whether hospitality’s counter-move is confirmed.
  • Mid-July — FLA asset finance statistics for May: tests whether April’s +14% pace extended into the softer spring data.
  • 15 July — BNPL formal regulation goes live (FCA, deferred payment credit): affordability checks, Consumer Duty and Ombudsman access take effect for consumer pay-later.
  • 15 July — Mansion House speech: a pre-announced SME finance package via the British Business Bank — a £6.5bn boost including expansion of the Growth Guarantee Scheme toward £3.35bn of supported lending per year and £500m of ENABLE guarantees for IP-rich SMEs — would extend the week’s theme of policy adding credit capacity.(30)
  • 16 July — ONS GDP monthly estimate, May: the first broad activity read covering the period the June PMIs describe.
  • Late July — big four H1 results season opens (Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest, HSBC): provisioning direction, SME impairment, and first comments on the capital framework review.
  • 30 July — BoE Monetary Policy Committee decision: markets pricing a hold at 3.75%; the vote split is the signal after June’s 7–2 with two votes to raise.

12. Upcoming events

  • 15 July 2026 — BNPL formal regulation go-live (FCA, Deferred Payment Credit).
  • 23 July 2026 — Howdens H1 results. The resilient end of the merchant channel reports first.
  • Late July 2026 — NACFB Commercial Broker Awards shortlist announced; Patron lender voting opens.
  • Late July 2026 — Big four H1 results season (Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest, HSBC UK).
  • 30 July 2026 — BoE Monetary Policy Committee decision and minutes.
  • 19 November 2026 — Credit Connect Commercial Credit & Collections Conference, Manchester.
  • 14–18 December 2026 / 16–26 February 2027 — Upper Tribunal hearings on the motor-finance redress challenge.
  • 1 January 2027 — Basel 3.1 implementation (PRA); SME-lending support factors preserved.

References

 

Shout-out to the credit and risk leaders whose firms featured this week — and in particular to this week’s movers: Rachel Davies, newly head of credit at BCRS Business Loans; James Gawn, newly CTO of Mettle and NatWest Boxed; Gary Harding, selected as president and CEO of Klarna Bank USA; Kuba Fast, appointed to head Revolut’s European banking entity; Vicky Davies OBE, joining the Shawbrook board; Jason Hurwitz, newly Group CEO at Star Asset Finance; Andrew Charnley, newly Group CEO at Sancus Lending; and Tamsin Todd, joining the Funding Circle board.

Read more