This morning I have been to the Federation of Small Businesses HQ in Blackpool with the aim of speaking to the host of tomorrow’s online event Martin McTague who will be firing questions at the British Business Bank about PAYG options on Bounce Back Loans.
Sadly, whilst the building did have staff inside, who were very welcoming, helpful and friendly, the chap I needed to speak to was not there. I did however get a phone call from Lesley Burgess and have put the following questions to her to pass onto Martin who hopefully in turn will put them to the British Business Bank.
Person I needed not in FSB office but just spoken to a lovely lady at the @fsb_policy re urgent points/questions about the online event re BBL/PAYG options just emailing them to her now and hopefully they will be putting them to the @BritishBBank
Thurs
cc @RishiSunak pic.twitter.com/vmFQxrIuqP— Mr Bounce Back (@Bounce_BackLoan) July 28, 2021
I shall start with a small overview of tomorrows online event which may be of interest to some of you out there, its free to register by the way and open to everyone.
FSB Online Event
An online event is being held, that being “Bounce Back Loans – How to benefit from Pay As You Grow” tomorrow the 29th of July 2021 and the event will be broadcast live from 13:00 until 14:00.
It is being hosted by Martin McTague who is the FSB National Vice Chair of Policy and Advocacy and other guests will be Richard Bearman – Managing Director, Small Business Lending and Gaynor Dykes – Senior Manager, Origination and Relationship Management, Guarantee and Wholesale Solutions at the British Business Bank
You can register to take part for free on the FSB website
Questions/Points Sent to the FSB
Thank you so much for calling me back, I just wish to put to you the following points/questions that I have been bombarded with re the PAYG options on Bounce Back Loans, which if Martin could put to the British Business Bank and get an official response during the live event tomorrow that would be fantastic.
Point/Question One
Is there an emergency plan/system in place for those who are unable to secure the all important PAYG options who are for example customers of Tide who have said they are not going to be offering them to their customers?
Point/Question Two
Many people are contacting me letting me know they cannot activate the PAYG options with some banks online and instantly and are being told via their online banking when trying to take those options they need to phone the bank up.
They then report being on the phone for hours waiting for someone to answer and then when their call is answered they are then left waiting for days/weeks for someone to call them back.
That often means by the time a response is forthcoming from the bank re those PAYG options their first full repayment has been taken out of their accounts or even the repayment bounces as they have not enough funds to cover them, hence them being eager to take the PAYG options.
Many are upset at this happening due to delays with the banks.
Point/Question Three
Some who attempt to take the PAYG options with some banks are then told that due to errors on the “shared industry database” (BBL database) the bank cannot activate the PAYG options for them until they contact every lender they may have approached to get a BBL and get a letter from them saying they did not get a BBL from each of them.
As you know some people were declined by some banks for a BBL, and some lenders ran out of money to lend or even closed their doors to new customers and many people had to try and try and try again with different lenders until they finally found one that would give them a BBL.
Is it fair for those bank customers to have to try and contact so many possible different lenders, which could take weeks or months to get a written response from them saying they did not give them a BBL to simply activate the PAYG options due to the well documented problems/errors with that database?
I worry the above problems could get worse in the weeks ahead as more and more people are due to start their repayments who finally, after trying many different lenders late in the day and months after the scheme launched did get a BBL but had to apply with many different lenders.
Thanks for your time Lesley, if the British Business Bank could answer those questions, I know 100’s of people who would be grateful.
Let us hope those questions do get answered as many of you out there are experiencing those problems and are at the end of your tether with them and are seriously worrying about them.