Specialist Loans in Scotland

Enterprise Finance Guarantee

As a SME, you may have viable business plans that need funding for which a loan would be appropriate. However, the finance or working capital may be limited due to downturns in the economy. The Enterprise Finance Guarantee helps to overcome this by providing lenders with a government guarantee for 75% of the lender’s exposure to individual loans.

Participating lenders administer the eligibility criteria and make all commercial decisions regarding borrowing. The decision whether or not to use the Enterprise Finance Guarantee with any loan rest with the lender and follows their commercial assessment of the proposition. The main features of the scheme are:

• a guarantee to the lender for 75% of the loan amount, for which the borrower pays a 2% premium on the balance outstanding on the loan.

• the ability to guarantee loans from £1,000 to £1,000,000 over 10 years

• availability to qualifying UK businesses with an annual turnover of up to £25 million.

• availability to businesses in most sectors and for most business purposes, although there are some restrictions.

More information

• This scheme is administered by Business Gateway in Scotland.

• See also Department of Business Innovation and Skills for details of the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme.

West of Scotland Loan Fund

WSLF is a unique consortium of twelve west of Scotland local authorities working together to provide loan finance to new and existing SMEs within the West of Scotland. WSLF supports the creation, development and growth of businesses within each of the 12 local authority areas including:

• Argyll & Bute

• East Ayrshire

• East Dunbartonshire

• East Renfrewshire

• Glasgow

• Inverclyde

• North Ayrshire

• North Lanarkshire

• Refrewshire

• South Ayrshire

• South Lanarkshire

• West Dunbartonshire

Eligible sectors include:

• Manufacturing

• Service to Manufacturing

• Construction

• Wholesale

• Transport & Distribution

• Software development

• Agriculture (linked to farm diversification)

• Tourism & tourism infrastructure

• Eligible Service based businesses.

For more information contact: www.wslf.co.uk

Regional Assistance

There are a number of business support programmes that are specifically available to businesses if there are located in a geographical area.

Please see the 'Regional Selective Assistance Programme' on the Scottish Grants page for more information.