Bounce Back Loan Scheme: Fraud

(asked on 3rd July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what discussions (a) he and (b) his officials have had with the administering bodies for the Bounce Back Loan Scheme on putting in place mechanisms and procedures to prevent and detect fraud in that scheme.


Answered by
Paul Scully Portrait
Paul Scully
This question was answered on 13th July 2020

The Government takes the threat of fraud very seriously and a range of measures have been put in place to mitigate fraud and error risk for the loan schemes, including data and intelligence sharing arrangements, enabling us to work together and target known fraud threats.

At scheme design level, the rules of the scheme set out minimum standards in relation to fraud which highlight action lenders are expected to take to identify fraudulent applications. The British Business Bank’s (BBB) audit function enables BBB to sample portfolios of lending to assess regularity and take action if required.

For the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), we continue to work extensively with BBB and the lenders to strengthen the anti-fraud systems in place. For obvious reasons, I cannot go into specific detail about measures either in place or in development. For the same reason, it is not possible to release the number of fraudulent applications or associated investigations.

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