Monthly Archives: August 2021

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Defaults on Bounce Back Loan repayments lower than feared

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By Anna Jordan on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Defaults on the government’s Bounce Back Loan scheme are set to total up to £5bn – much lower than the previous tens of billions expected.

The estimates from officials and bankers come from an assessment based on the first few months of debt servicing. So far, it shows that between five per cent and ten per cent of SMEs that used the Bounce Back Loan scheme have missed out on repayments.

>See also: Nearly two thirds of Bounce Back Loans could go bad, says government

Bankers said that the expected recovery from Covid-19 helped companies regain their financial independence. One banking executive said that five per cent were already repaid in full on the date that the 12-month interest-free payment ended, saying that not all of the loans were taken out of desperation, but out of caution.

However, some bankers feel they could have pushed back the worst of the issues through its ‘pay as you grow’ scheme, offering repayment holidays of up to six months as well as extended loan terms of up to ten years.

Last year the government predicted that between 35 per cent and 60 per

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Adopting a small business mindset is key

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By The Inside Tracc on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

When Precision FM was still in its infancy, founder Brij Thankey began to realise that he couldn’t transfer the ideas he’d picked up in his corporate career straight into his fledgling start-up.

In his earlier life, there were too many instances where desktop modelling on a spreadsheet to see how much money the business could save by ‘getting the machete out’ was the order of the day. But he now saw that he needed to think less about the business’ numbers and more about its people. Get the people side of it right, by recruiting good people and building strong teams, and the numbers would follow.

When it comes to recruiting, Brij’s motto is to look out for the undiscovered gems. He came to realise that when someone did well in an interview, all that told you was that they were good at doing interviews. It was all too easy to reject people at first sight, just because they performed poorly in an unnatural situation that bore no relation to the job they were being interviewed for. Give them a chance, look a little deeper, and

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Embrace your unconventional superpowers

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By The Inside Tracc on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Brij Thankey started out in the corporate world, “a numbers guy” as he puts it, but he grew weary of conventional thinking and jumped ship to create a different kind of business.

A decade on, that business – Precision FM – is a national leader in facilities management across the UK and Ireland, and CEO Publication has recognised Brij among the UK’s Top 20 Dynamic CEOs.

One of Brij’s guiding principles is that honesty and transparency are what connect with people, and as you’ll see he’s still more than happy to give voice to ideas that go against the grain.

For starters, there’s the notion that big businesses can learn a lot from the way that small businesses operate. When he was starting out at Precision FM, Brij believed he could base the new business on the assumptions he’d acquired in his corporate career, but he soon came to realise he’d need to rethink things from the bottom up.  

Above all, he says, big businesses get too obsessed about the bottom line. They need to recognise that their greatest assets are their people, and that they’ll get

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