UK credit supply loosens to the smallest borrowers as output turns negative

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UK B2B credit and lending news digest, 7–13 June 2026

Summary

New this week: UK monthly GDP turned negative for the first time since August 2025, contracting 0.1% in April as the Middle East conflict fed through to services output.(1)(2)

What matters isn't the dip itself but the gap opening up around it. Even as the economy cooled, lending to small firms clearly sped up: UK Finance reported new SME lending of £5.3bn in Q1, up 16% on a year earlier and the highest since 2021, with lending to the smallest firms up 51% and loan approvals up 36% by value and 42% by number.(3)

Two other themes frame the week. First, motor-finance compensation (redress) has gone from an accounting cost to something deeper, and is now reshaping who owns whom: FirstRand has put Aldermore up for sale after setting aside a reported £750m for compensation, and Shawbrook is weighing a takeover — the first time these payouts have redrawn the specialist-bank map.(7)(8)

Second, the backwards-looking numbers stayed calm — company insolvencies in May were broadly flat at 2,343 (down 7% on a year ago, up 2% on April) — but the early-warning signs were not: hospitality has overtaken construction as the most distressed sector, and small county court judgments (CCJs) against businesses are climbing toward their highest since 2019.(4)(28)(29)

What this adds up to: lenders are easing up just as demand weakens, while compensation costs quietly drain capital from specialist banks. A full sweep of the alternative-lender and specialist market this week shows how broad the easing is — a first bank-capital bond, new funding lines, loan-bond deals and a wave of bridging rate cuts, all adding capacity rather than pulling it back. Lending fastest to the smallest, newest borrowers just as the economy turns is exactly where 2027's loan losses are being written today. The discipline this week is not to mistake a lot of new lending for a healthy credit market.

1. Key developments

GDP fell 0.1% in April. The first monthly fall since August 2025, driven by a 0.2% drop in services; the ONS and commentators link it directly to the worsening conflict in the Middle East. Over three months, the economy still grew 0.7%, so this is a possible turning point rather than a clear trend — but it is the first hard sign that the energy shock is now hitting the UK economy itself.(1)(2)
SME lending hit a post-pandemic high. UK Finance put new SME lending at £5.3bn in Q1, up 16% on a year earlier and the highest since 2021; lending to the smallest businesses rose 51%, with approvals up 36% by value and 42% by number.3
World Bank cut 2026 global growth to 2.5%. The cut (from 2.6%) was tied directly to the Iran conflict and the risk of lasting disruption to energy supplies — demand abroad for UK exporters is weakening just as lending at home grows.5
Motor-finance compensation reshapes the challenger map. FirstRand has put Aldermore up for sale after setting aside a reported £750m for compensation; Shawbrook is in early talks about a takeover. This is consolidation forced by a regulatory bill, not chosen for strategy — watch for knock-on effects on funding lines and lending appetite across bridging and buy-to-let specialists.(7)(8)
Insolvencies flat, but distress is building. May insolvencies of 2,343 (down 7% on a year ago) look reassuring, but Begbies' measure of firms in serious financial distress, plus construction staying the worst-hit sector (387 insolvencies in May), show the backwards-looking and early-warning numbers pulling apart again.(4)(10)(11)
Consumer Credit Act reform is reaching credit teams. Not new this week — the Treasury set out its plan on 18 May, and the Bill followed on 19 May — but it reached credit teams this week, with CICM publishing a plain-English explainer for lenders (11 June) alongside a Companies House accounts-reform update (10 June). The direction of travel: most of the old Consumer Credit Act is being scrapped and replaced with more flexible FCA rules under the Consumer Duty. It matters for motor finance, buy-now-pay-later and any SME lender close to consumer credit.(25)(26)(34)
Hospitality overtakes construction as the most distressed sector. Hotels, pubs and restaurants accounted for 3,295 insolvencies in the year to March (14% of all cases), and the sector is now losing about 3.4 venues a day, with more than 350 closures in Q1; UKHospitality warns that this could reach six a day. It's the week's clearest stress signal outside construction.28
Bank of England decision on Thursday, 18 June. Bank Rate has stayed at 3.75% since December 2025; in April the committee voted 8-1, with one member wanting a rise, and the Bank's own forecasts show inflation climbing through the second half of the year. Another hold is expected, but the energy shock means a rate rise can't be ruled out.6

2. Market signals

Credit quality and risk

The headline insolvency figure is the least useful number right now. May's 2,343 is 7% below a year ago — the third month running of year-on-year falls — but that's a flattering comparison with a bad spell last year, not a real improvement: levels are still well above pre-2020 norms, and the early-warning signs point the other way. Begbies counted 67,369 firms in serious distress at the end of 2025 (up 43.8% on the year), and construction alone took 9,466 of them into Q1.(4)(10)(11)

Allianz Trade reads it the same way: UK insolvencies level off at around 26,550 in 2026 (down 1%) but stay roughly 30% above pre-pandemic levels, with the Middle East conflict adding an estimated 7,000 cases versus its earlier forecast. Levelling off at a high level is the point — the cycle isn't turning down, it's settling at a high floor.9

The other side: the insurers don't agree with each other. Atradius sees late payments stabilising and points to early signs of recovery, though its latest forecasts still rate 208 of 555 sector views as high risk; Coface expects UK growth around 1.0% with inflation easing toward 2% by mid-year. That disagreement — Allianz cautious, Atradius more upbeat — is itself the signal: insurers are being selective rather than pulling back everywhere, so any cover that gets withdrawn will be sector-by-sector, not across the board. Don't treat one insurer's view as the whole market's.(31)(32)

Credit supply and lending conditions

Supply is where the real split is. The Q1 SME figures, asset finance hitting a record £4.5bn in March (up 9% on the year, with equipment finance up 16%), and a wave of new money into alternative lenders all point the same way: capacity is being added, not pulled back.(3)(14)

The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee found in April that banks are well-capitalised and not cutting lending to protect capital — its review of bank capital reports back in July. So this isn't a stretched system pushing out credit; it's a confident one lending more. That's exactly why the timing — lending more just as the economy shrank — is worth flagging rather than cheering.17

3. Where risk is building

Hospitality. Now the most distressed sector in England and Wales by share of insolvencies: 3,295 cases in the year to March (14% of the total), about 3.4 closures a day, and a UKHospitality warning of up to six a day as April's higher wages, business rates and energy costs bite. For suppliers and asset financiers exposed to pubs, restaurants and hotels, this is the sector to reprice first — ahead of construction, not behind it.28
Construction, with the stress moving down the chain. Still among the worst sectors: 387 insolvencies in May and a run of early-2026 collapses (five big firms within weeks; Zentia, handled by Interpath, 170 jobs). The sharper signal this week is a payment gap — CICM reports builders now waiting around 53 days to be paid, with eight in ten said to be within eight months of collapse, while the biggest main contractors (per Build UK) still pay in 31 days. The pain sits with the smaller specialist trades (design, plumbing and heating, electrical), not the main contractors — which is exactly where suppliers are most exposed.(10)(11)(27)(12)
Energy-exposed manufacturing and logistics. April's fall in GDP and the World Bank's downgrade share one cause: the energy shock. The first knock-on to watch is the squeeze on energy-hungry manufacturers and hauliers, whose margins are thinnest and who are slowest to pass higher costs on. No named casualties yet — but this is the route by which the Middle East conflict reaches UK loan books.(1)(5)
Newest small-business loans. The 51% jump in lending to the smallest firms is the week's biggest risk concentration. The smallest borrowers are the most fragile when the economy turns; lending to them fast, just as the economy shrinks, is a classic recipe for picking up bad loans. It's a risk being built into the books now, not a problem today — which is exactly why it belongs here.3

4. Friction signals and where credit is failing

No lender publicly announced a pullback this week — but that silence is itself the signal, and the squeeze is built-in rather than announced:

Compensation costs are draining capital. Aldermore's forced sale and FirstRand's £750m set-aside show motor-finance compensation pulling capital out of specialist lenders. Where these bills bite, appetite for new lending shrinks even if no one announces it. Expect quieter renewals and tougher criteria in buy-to-let and bridging from the lenders most exposed to these payouts.(7)(8)
Quiet tightening, no announcements. No public pullback this week, but a steady, selective squeeze in specialist property lending: bridging completions and total loan books are at record highs (over £13bn), yet that volume is being written on stricter terms — deals above roughly 75% loan-to-value are, in practice, increasingly hard to place at specialist lenders, even where headline rates look available.23
More creditors are going to court. Registry Trust data shows county court judgments (CCJs) at their highest since 2019, with judgments against businesses up 1.9% to 176,273 in 2025 and the typical value falling toward £500 — driven by lots of small claims, i.e. small suppliers chasing debts through the courts sooner. CCJs tend to come before insolvencies, so this rise is early stress that the flat insolvency numbers are hiding. Treat a new CCJ on a borrower or counterparty as a bigger warning than the headline insolvency trend suggests.29
Fraud is raising the cost of saying yes. Cifas's Fraudscape 2026 shows first-party fraud — people lying on their own applications — still rising, with about 1 in 8 (12%) admitting it, up from 8% in 2021, plus more staff and insider fraud at small firms. The takeaway is practical, not abstract: for fast-growing books of new, unsecured small-business loans (exactly the group up 51% this quarter), it argues for tighter identity checks at sign-up, higher pricing on loans under £50k, and a fresh look at expected-loss estimates before this year's new loans start to age.13

5. Who is doing what

Bank behaviour layer and the big four

Lloyds Banking Group . No change in lending policy this week. Its motor-finance compensation set-aside stays at £1.95bn against the FCA scheme — the biggest such bill among the Big Four, and the reason its SME-growth push (around £9.5bn earmarked for SMEs this year) reads as ambition balanced against a known hit to capital.(7)(22)(24)
Barclays. No change this week. Part of the £11bn joint SME lending package; no new set-asides or change in appetite disclosed.24
NatWest. No change this week. Still the most SME-focused of the Big Four; no policy change.
HSBC UK. Became headline sponsor of the NACFB broker body for 2026/27 — a marketing and distribution move rather than a lending-policy one, but a sign it intends to defend its share of small-business and broker lending against the challengers. No change in lending policy this week.72

Read across the four: all four sitting still in a week when the economy shrank is itself telling — the Big Four are not tightening ahead of the downturn. That confidence is the flip side of the surge in SME lending.

Lenders tightening

No lender publicly tightened this week. The only tightening is indirect — compensation costs squeezing specialist lenders (Aldermore, and by extension the wider motor-finance group) and quietly curbing their appetite, with no formal announcement.(7)(8)

Lenders expanding

Triver. Raised £114m to grow its short-term, cash-flow lending to small firms — real extra capacity, and a newer name rather than the usual big three specialist banks.18
Propel Finance. Completed a £1.5bn funding round for SME asset finance — serious firepower behind the FLA's record March figures.19
Oxbury Bank. Increased its British Business Bank capital support to £35m to back farming and rural SME lending — an often-overlooked area, and a sign that state-backed capital is still reaching niche specialists.20
Juice. Secured £25m for AI-driven SME lending — small loans, mostly to online businesses; one to watch on loan performance precisely because it lends to the fast-growing, smallest-borrower group flagged in section 3.21
Funding Circle. Renewed its £200m funding deal with Deutsche Bank for SME lending — big institutional money recommitting to platform lenders, not backing away.42
Roma Finance. Secured J.P. Morgan funding to launch long-term buy-to-let and commercial loans (terms up to 40 years), moving from a short-term bridging and development lender toward lending across the full life of a loan — a clear step upmarket.43
Skipton Business Finance. Completed its first asset-based lending deal (£5m — £3.5m against invoices plus a £1.5m government-backed cash-flow loan), launching a new product line — a building-society-owned lender moving into working-capital finance.46
GB Bank. Launched ready-made buy-to-let and bridging products for brokers (from 0.79% a month, up to 75% loan-to-value) — a specialist bank widening its reach through brokers.73

6. Capital and funding

Funding markets this week were selective but clearly open — and the watch-list sweep shows how much is happening. The standout was Starling's first £150m capital bond (11 June), the first public bond of its kind from a European digital bank, with 2.5 times more demand than supply at a 6.625% interest rate — a real milestone for the challengers. Allica added £15m of British Business Bank capital support (9 June, taking the total to £45m and supporting up to £150m more lending); LendInvest launched a new 8% bond running to 2032; and Propel followed its £1.5bn funding round with its first bond backed by its own loans, Velocity 2026-1, raising £306m with 2.7 times more demand than supply.(35)(36)(37)(38)(19)

Funding lines are being added across the board: Bridge Invest secured a £250m line plus a flexible credit facility, Hope Capital a £35m line from Hampshire Trust Bank, Capchase over $200m ($26m equity and a $174m credit line), and Twinco Capital €165m (about $190m) for supply-chain finance (a €15m funding round plus a €150m Santander loan-bond fund). Alongside Triver's £114m and Oxbury's extra capital support, and with the Bank of England's April finding that banks have plenty of spare cash, the funding window is open into the summer — and it's the specialists and newer lenders, not the Big Four, doing most of the raising.(40)(41)(75)(39)(18)(20)(17)

And the money is being lent out, not parked. Named deals this week included Leumi UK's £100m credit line to LNT Care Developments and an £85m loan on a City of London office; OakNorth's £28.5m to D2 PropCo for supported housing; CrowdProperty agreeing £24m of development loans in June (over £400m in total); and Principality Commercial reporting £175m of new lending (up 18%) as it was named Lender of the Year at the Wales Property Awards. The capital is being put to work — in care homes, supported housing, development and commercial property.(44)(45)(74)(47)

Where the money goes matters more than how much. It's pooling at two ends: the smallest, fastest loans (Juice, Triver, embedded working capital) and asset-backed lending (Propel, the record equipment-finance figures). The squeezed middle is the specialist bank hit by compensation costs, where the Aldermore sale shows capital being freed up by selling the business rather than raised to grow. That split — alternative lenders raising money to expand while specialist banks restructure under compensation bills — is the clearest divide in UK lending right now.(7)(14)(19)

7. People moves and leadership signals

Areas checked this week: specialist and challenger banks, alternative lenders, buy-now-pay-later, bridging, credit insurance, restructuring firms, CICM and the regulators. Named moves were thin among lenders but present in restructuring — itself an early signal:

Interpath . Strengthened its restructuring offering with Simon Stibbons (Partner, from Kroll), building up its government and public-sector restructuring team. Hiring like this at a restructuring firm is an early sign they expect more work — and Interpath is already handling the Zentia construction collapse. Read it as advisers staffing up for more failures, not fewer.30
Hampshire Trust Bank appointed Nick Clayton as development-finance Lending Director (from Close Brothers Property Finance) — adding capacity in development lending while others pull back.48
TAB named Jack Bonner Chief Risk Officer (promoted from within) — building out its risk team as it grows from a bridging specialist into a broader lender.49
Monument Bank hired Xavier De Pauw as Director of Lending to launch lending against customers' investments — a new product line, not just a replacement hire.50
Cambridge & Counties Bank promoted Stephen Parr to a new Head of Bridging Finance role — a signal of intent to grow bridging.51
Fleet Mortgages made two senior hires (risk/data and operations) under a new managing director — deepening its leadership team.52
Beach Point Capital hired Louis DiFranco to lead an insurance-client capital-raising drive in SME direct lending.53
NACFB. Two new broker directors joined the board earlier in 2026; no further named appointments this week. Membership is now 1,414 firms and 3,011 individual brokers — the broker market is still growing even as deals get harder to do.

8. From the industry

Brokers first. The NACFB Commercial Finance Expo (10 June, NEC Birmingham) was the week's big event for the broker market, with membership at a record 1,414 firms and over 3,000 registered brokers — a fifth straight year of growth.16

What matters for brokers is where deals can actually get placed, not the member count. With specialist property lenders quietly tightening (comfortable below 75% loan-to-value), compensation-hit lenders going quiet, and alternative lenders adding capacity for smaller loans, the map is shifting: easier to place small working-capital and asset-finance deals, harder to place higher-borrowing specialist property. Brokers struggling to place deals should expect the problem to sit in bridging and development above that loan-to-value line. The Commercial Broker Awards deadline (15 June) and HSBC's headline sponsorship of the NACFB for 2026/27 both show how hard banks are now competing for business that comes through brokers.16

Suppliers and how fast they get paid. The biggest main contractors (per Build UK) pay in an average 31 days, with 61% paying within 30 days and none above the 45-day threshold for government work — so payment at the top of the construction chain is improving even as distress builds lower down. The Fair Payment Code now lists 516 signed-up firms (250 gold, 95 silver, 171 bronze) under the Small Business Commissioner; this is the current scheme — the old Prompt Payment Code name no longer applies. The gap — strong payment at the top, rising distress below — tells suppliers exactly where to tighten: not the main contractors, but the smaller specialist trades.(12)(15)

How small firms feel. The FSB's Small Business Index was -53 in Q1 2026 — up from the record low of -71 in late 2025, but still deeply negative, with the FSB blaming April's cost increases (higher minimum wage, sick pay, Making Tax Digital and dividend tax). Set against the record SME lending, that's the tension of the week: firms are borrowing more while feeling worse — borrowing as much out of need as ambition. Borrowing out of necessity tends to be riskier than borrowing to grow.33

Practitioner and regulatory news. The practitioner news this week was mostly regulatory: CICM published a plain-English explainer for lenders on the Consumer Credit Act reform (the Treasury's 18 May plan, now reaching credit teams) and an update on the Companies House accounts reforms. The Act's reform — moving detailed rules out of old law and into more flexible FCA rules under the Consumer Duty — most affects motor finance, buy-now-pay-later and SME lenders close to consumer credit; the Companies House changes tighten filing and identity rules, which improves the quality of business-identity data over time but adds compliance work in the near term. Neither is an emergency; both are changes to track, not react to.(25)(26)(34)

Wider regulatory agenda. Beyond that Act, the rules around SME credit firmed up this week. The FCA's call for views on regulation and SME access to finance — with a June London roundtable that explicitly covers how easily lenders can get credit information — and its Open Finance plan, which names SME lending a top priority, both point toward more required data-sharing in SME credit.79 The Basel 3.1 bank rules are now confirmed for 1 January 2027 (a year later than planned), keeping the breaks that make lending to small firms cheaper on capital — easing one drag on appetite to lend.80 The FCA also confirmed it won't write AI-specific rules — overseeing AI lending decisions through existing Consumer Duty and model-risk expectations instead, which matters as more specialist lenders move to AI-assisted decisions81 — and is separately considering forcing private-credit funds to disclose more, a first step toward visibility on the fastest-growing lenders to mid-sized firms.82

Credit insurance. With the insurers split (Allianz cautious, Atradius more upbeat), the message for underwriters is to be selective, not to pull back: cover will get tighter first in hospitality, energy-hungry manufacturing, smaller construction trades and import-heavy wholesale. Credit teams relying on insured limits in those areas should stress-test what happens to their loan book if cover is cut — not because anyone has announced it, but because the insurers' published views point that way.(9)(31)

Specialist and bridging market — cutting prices and adding products. The clearest pattern this week was specialist property lenders competing hard on price and products, not retreating: rate cuts from Glenhawk (its whole bridging range), Market Harborough (from 0.53% a month), Castle Trust (plus new automated valuations), London Credit (part-commercial) and Colenko (after rolling out AI underwriting, funded by Shawbrook and Renaissance); new or limited-edition products from West One, CHL Mortgages and Quantum Mortgages; easier criteria and bigger loan sizes at Hodge; new market entries by Keystone (part-commercial) and GB Bank (broker buy-to-let and bridging); and distribution moves including Afin Bank joining the L&C broker panel and FOLK2FOLK's broker-focused 'Inside Credit'. Liberty Leasing renamed itself Liberty Finance at the NACFB Expo, and Fasanara launched a Ferrari-backed lending platform. Put together: specialists are adding capacity and cutting prices — in line with section 4's point that the squeeze is on higher-borrowing deals, not on appetite to lend overall.(55)(58)(57)(77)(62)(56)(79)(78)(59)(60)(61)(73)(76)(63)(64)(65)

Results and trading. Time Finance said its loan book passed £250m for the first time and grew for a 20th quarter running (results due 25 June); Cumberland Building Society reported record £2.89bn of mortgage lending; and Paragon's half-year (to 31 March) showed profit down about 2.5% with shares falling on the day, but its commercial loan book up 9.2% and a £50m share buyback — a reminder that even weaker results can sit on top of a growing commercial book. Among community and regional lenders, ART Business Loans grew lending about 20%, SWIG Finance lent a record £18.4m to 500-plus small firms, and GC Business Finance handed out a record £26m-plus in Start Up Loans — the not-for-profit lenders are growing into the same SME demand the high-street banks are chasing.(65)(66)(78)(67)(68)(69)

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9. What does all this mean

Where risk is rising: in hospitality (now the most distressed sector), in construction's smaller specialist trades, in the newest and smallest loans, and — tellingly — in rising small court judgments against businesses. The backwards-looking insolvency number is flat; the early-warning signs (distress counts, court judgments, the energy shock, and how fast the smallest firms are borrowing) are not. Trust the early-warning signs.(28)(29)
Where credit is flowing — and where it's stuck: flowing freely to the smallest firms and asset-backed borrowers; stuck at the specialist banks hit by compensation costs, where capital is being freed up by selling the business, not raised to grow.(7)(8)
Who's tightening vs growing: alternative lenders (Triver, Propel, Oxbury, Juice) and the Big Four are growing or holding steady; only the compensation-hit specialists are really tightening — quietly, through less appetite rather than announcements.(18)(19)
What genuinely changed this week: the economy shrank for the first time in eight months, and motor-finance compensation went from an accounting cost to a trigger for takeovers. Both are genuinely new, not knock-on effects.(1)(8)

10. Operator actions (Recommended)

Tighten identity checks and sign-up controls on new, unsecured loans to the smallest firms now — the group growing 51% is where bad loans show up first.(3)(13)
Revisit expected-loss estimates on unsecured SME loans under £50k before this year's new loans start to age; fraud on applications is still rising and these loans are the most exposed.13
Stress-test your reliance on compensation-hit specialist lenders (funding lines, broker panels, buy-to-let and bridging placement) against an Aldermore sale — assume quieter renewals and tougher criteria.(7)(8)
Reprice hospitality exposure now — it's already the most distressed sector, not a future risk; review pub, restaurant and hotel credit and asset-finance limits this week.28
Reprice energy-hungry manufacturing, smaller construction trades and import-heavy wholesale for the energy shock now showing up in April's GDP — don't wait for insurers to cut cover to confirm it.1
Treat a new small court judgment (CCJ) as a real warning, not noise — these are rising ahead of the flat insolvency figures; build CCJ alerts into how you monitor live exposures.29
Watch the Bank of England decision on 18 June and the July bank-capital report; a surprise rate rise would quickly undercut the case for expanding SME lending.(6)(17)
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11. Week ahead

Thu 18 June — Bank of England MPC rate decision (12:00) and Governor's press conference; hold at 3.75% expected, watch the vote split and energy-shock language.6
Mon 15 June — NACFB Commercial Broker Awards submission deadline (5pm) — a read on broker-channel confidence and volume.16
Through June — FLA monthly asset-finance figures and UK Finance business-credit data — to confirm whether the record pace of new lending held into Q2.14
June — FCA SME-finance roundtable (its review of regulation and access to finance, with how easily lenders can get credit information in scope) — an early signal on required SME data-sharing.79
July — Bank of England Financial Stability Report, with the conclusions of its bank-capital review — the key signal on whether lending stays easy.17
Ongoing — Any firm news on the Shawbrook/Aldermore deal; oil prices and the Middle East conflict as the main outside influence on credit.(8)(5)
Early July — Insolvency Service company insolvencies for June — the first month that might start to reflect April's downturn.4

12. Upcoming events

17 June — FCA CP26/15 consultation closes (FCA). Industry response window on outcomes-based CONC reform.
18 June — BoE MPC decision (Bank of England). Pricing implies a hold at 3.75%; Middle East energy pass-through is the swing factor.
23–25 June — Credit Strategy Credit Week 2026 (Celtic Manor Resort). Credit Awards, Credit 500 and Partnership 100 — the flagship UK credit-and-collections gathering.
29 June — BoE Money & Credit, May 2026 (Bank of England). Next directional read on corporate lending availability.
1 July — BNPL temporary permissions window closes (FCA). Register-or-exit deadline for in-scope firms.
15 July — BNPL formal regulation goes live (FCA, Deferred Payment Credit). Front-loaded compliance work lands in checkout economics.
Late July — FLA monthly statistics (Finance & Leasing Association). Tests whether the record asset-finance pace holds into Q2.
11 November — BDLA 2026 Annual Conference (Bridging & Development Lenders Association). Year-end specialist real-estate finance gathering.
1 Jan 2027 — Basel 3.1 implementation (PRA). One-year delay now confirmed; SME-lending support factors preserved.