Client

Investment Fund Management Directorate, Small Business Service now named Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

The Graham Review of Small Firms Loan Guarantee (SFLG) was commissioned by the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in December 2003. The Review was tasked with examining the structure and rules of SFLG and whether SFLG is sufficient to tackle the barriers faced by start-ups and small businesses in the current market.

The review set out a number of recommendations focused to place the scheme in the context of the UK debt market and the Government’s other interventions in the finance market. Also, based on responses from stakeholders, the recommendations propose a radical agenda for administrative reform to simplify SFLG and to reduce bureaucracy.

Project Objectives

To deliver the Graham Review recommendations a programme of work was developed to include the implementation of a Web Portal (allowing lenders to manage the scheme), and to define the supporting audit, security and operational processes. TOMA were hired to provide strategic consulting to the programme to help manage Stakeholder expectations, develop internal and external processes and successfully implement them within the stakeholders and supplier environments.

Stakeholders

• 23 financial institutions including Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, HSBC and RBS Group.
• Government departments including the Small Business Service (now named Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)), HM Treasury

Strategy, Tactics and Skills

• Conducted Stakeholder workshops to gather requirements (from 23 banking institutions, including Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, HSBC and RBS) and regularly report on the status of each of the 14 threads of the programme
• Designed the external and internal operational processes to be put in place in order to deliver the scheme. Including:
• annual audit process
• direct debit collection and reporting of Premiums paid to the government
• Internal processing of Demands made by Lenders to the government.
• Use of a web portal to manage and monitor all SFLG loans through a lifecycle
• Worked with the technology supplier delivering the Web Portal to verify that all stakeholder requirements are delivered
• Met with Lending institutions to provide guidance and support for the implementation of the scheme within their organisation

Results and Evaluation

The SFLG GRIP Programme was successfully implemented on the 27th July 2007 and has been running successfully since, including the implementation of the final phase of the SFLG Web Portal development. The implementation provided a number of benefits including:

• Reduction in time to process SFLG loan applications from 4-6 weeks to 10 minutes providing a significant reduction in Lender and Government costs
• Improved data quality and management information to enable Lenders and Government to manage and monitor the scheme
• Reduction of government staff required to manage and monitor the scheme

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