BCR Award: Our Q2 2024 update

In February 2024, Banking Competition Remedies (BCR), the organisation responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Capability and Innovation Fund, was wound down. We will however, continue to report on our progress until the conclusion of our business case in 2025.

In the second quarter of 2024 we continued to execute against our strategic priorities, increasing the size of our SME loan book by more than £100m, bringing new product features to market and maintaining our reputation for outstanding customer service.

As part of our successful application to the BCR Capability and Innovation Fund, we made nine commitments, and we remain committed to delivering against all of them. Here is how we are doing:

1. Bringing innovative smart lending products to market

We have continued to bring enhancements to our lending proposition in the second quarter of 2024, including (1) becoming an accredited lender under the Growth Guarantee Scheme, the successor to the Recovery Loan Scheme; (2) increasing the maximum LTV available on our larger loans to support larger entities; and (3) rolling out our Decision Engine to a broker beta group, which when fully rolled out will enable the automation of c. 60 individual rules.

2. Commitment to deliver a next generation broker experience

This commitment has been formally delivered. Our delivery teams remain focused on implementing ongoing enhancements to our next generation broker portal and building technical enablers for future automation deliverables. This resulted in a total of 32 features being released in the last quarter.

3. Address discouraged demand and improving financial wellbeing

This commitment has been delivered. We have continued to work with our existing partners to understand emerging ways for us to use Open Banking cloud accountancy e-commerce data to enhance our decisioning and monitoring processes.

4. Accelerate the net zero transition

The commitment is on track. At the heart of Atom’s ESG approach, formally adopted by the Board in 2023, is a strategy which reconfirms Atom’s long-term target of being carbon positive, reducing carbon emissions and subsequently sequestering more carbon from the atmosphere each year, by 2035. We have continued to work on enhancements to our criteria and policy which will allow us to finance a diverse range of green and natural capital initiatives, including habitat restoration and carbon sequestration.

5. Transforming small business banking

This commitment is on track. We continue to deliver timely and affordable lending into the market and provide exceptional, market leading levels of customer service. As of 30th March 2024, we have completed £709m of BCR-attributable secured lending and a further £106m of unsecured lending via our partner.

6. Create 70 jobs in the North East

This commitment has been delivered. To date, more than 70 people have joined us directly supported by BCR funding, including 11 graduates. There remain two vacancies associated with our BCR programme of work live on our website. All open roles are available to view on our careers page.

7. Partner with innovative fintechs

This commitment has been delivered. To date, we have partnered with ten innovative UK SMEs to support us in delivering our commitments.

8. Deliver transparency

We have and will continue to publish BCR Commitment Updates to our website until we have successfully met our deliverables under the programme. This includes live updates to our transparent product roadmap, allowing our customers and intermediary partners to keep up to date on what we’re building and where we’d like to go in the future.

9. Invest our own money alongside the award

Alongside the BCR award of £10m, we remain committed to invest at least £15m of our own funding. We expect to have deployed the entirety of the remaining monies before the end of Q2 2025.