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Our 2026 Impact Report sets out the impact of the British Business Bank’s activity on smaller businesses across the UK’s Nations and regions.
What we do
At the British Business Bank, our mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK.
Across the whole of the UK, there is an extraordinary depth of innovation and talent, driven by a dynamic ecosystem of start-ups and scale-ups that are transforming industries, creating the high-value jobs of the future, revitalising local high streets and communities, and driving vital technological advances globally. From AI, fintech and life sciences to clean energy, advanced manufacturing, defence and creative technologies, UK businesses are developing the next generation of innovative solutions, supported by world-class universities, deep pools of human talent and strong financial markets.
Having investors who understand the market and realities of deep tech development made all the difference. The support from British Business Bank backed funds enabled us to accelerate our engineering roadmap and reach key in orbit milestones, - Sean Sutcliffe Founder and CEO, Oxford Space Systems
The scale of opportunity is unprecedented. Yet despite these strengths, the depth and availability of funding for businesses to grow in the UK has not kept pace with the magnitude of the need. When potentially brilliant businesses struggle to start up and grow, we all miss out on the value they could have created.
As one of the UK Government’s economic development banks, it is our role to work in close partnership with private markets to increase significantly the flow of capital to new and growing companies so that they thrive, and so we can capture the economic value their innovation generates for the UK.
The British Business Bank today
The UK’s largest domestic investor in UK venture and venture growth capital funds
The most active late-stage investor in UK deep tech and life sciences
Expected to support 1.7m jobs, with an estimated 370,000 additional jobs created
Supported 15% of all smaller business equity deals between 2023-25, accounting for 16% of the value of equity investment
A backer of one in four UK university spinouts
Enabled £3.7bn finance to smaller businesses through the Growth Guarantee Scheme
Equipped with a permanent financial capacity of £25.6bn
67% of the UK’s current unicorn businesses received equity investment from British Business Bank supported funds
Has supported £12.4bn of finance through ENABLE programmes
With a total financial capacity of £25.6 billion – and new freedoms to allocate capital more flexibly – the government has asked us to deliver against four strategic objectives:
- Supporting our most promising businesses in the Industrial Strategy priority sectors to scale and stay here
- Making finance markets work better for smaller businesses
- Unlocking the potential in people and places
- Mobilising institutional capital at scale.
Helping the most promising companies to start and grow in the UK means we will create new opportunities and new jobs across the length and breadth of the country – and in the long term, we will help to change the shape of the UK economy to give the people of this country the best chance for future prosperity and security.
Putting our capital to work
Over the next five years, we will deliver up to a total of £29.7bn across our Banking and Investment core businessesRead footnote text 1 .
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These figures, taken from our five-year Strategic Plan plus an expansion to the GGS announced in July 2026, and totalling up to £29.7bn, are distinct from the Bank’s permanent financial capacity of £25.6bn as this is a limit and represents both commitments already made, future commitments, and returns.
Banking figures
£19.9bn
£1.7bn
Debt Funding
£6.1bn
Structured guarantees
£1.3bn
Start Up Loans
£10.8bn
Growth Guarantee Scheme
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Through our Banking business, we increase the availability of debt finance for businesses right across the UK so promising businesses are much more likely to get the loan they need to start and grow.
We do this by providing start up loans for entrepreneurs so people with great ideas have a better chance of getting started, no matter what their background is or where they are in the country. Alongside this, our Government-backed guarantees support banks and other finance providers to lend more to businesses who need debt finance to grow.
We also use other financial instruments to increase capacity for financial institutions to deliver more lending into the economy. And we are working hard locally to support and scale the market of community-based lenders who lend directly to talented people who may still find it hard to get a traditional loan.
Over the next five years, we will deliver over 85,000 Start Up Loans and over £10bn in guarantee support. We expect this to create £11bn of additional GVA across the economy and support 1.4m jobs across the UK.
Investment
£9.8bn
£3.7bn
Commercial Equity
£1.3bn
Direct & Co-invest
£2.9bn
Development Equity Funds
£1.9bn
Nations and Regions Investment Funds, debt and other regional funding
Through our Investment business, we increase the availability of equity finance so that founders have more chance of getting the finance they need to start and scale their business in the UK.
We do this by investing in funds and directly into companies. In our funds investments, we are taking early risk and writing larger cheques to help the best fund managers raise much bigger funds so they have the firepower to support UK scale up companies, as well as taking action to help them mobilise UK institutional capital at scale into these opportunities.
Alongside this, we invest directly into companies to support our most strategically important scale-up companies to grow in the UK. At an earlier stage, we take greater risk than the wider market to support new fund managers to start and grow in the industry, especially those specialising in priority sectors and technology areas, and those from backgrounds where the barriers to entry are higher.
Over the next five years, we expect to invest more than £10bn, creating more than 300,000 jobs and £57bn of GVA over the lifetime of the finance.
Across all this activity, we know that innovative businesses are created in every corner of the UK and all deserve the same chance to grow and create jobs and prosperity in the communities where they were started.
We ensure that there is a national network of regional equity and debt providers that can provide early stage finance to companies. We are working with an ever-broader range of partners to expand these finance options and to make sure that fast-growing companies find it easier to get the capital they need to grow, wherever they are based.
Our new Local Growth team means we have senior resource based in each region, ready to work in partnership with Mayoral authorities and other critical parts of the ecosystem to use the Bank’s financial and convening firepower to bring real money into the best local opportunities.