Overview of anticipated focus areas for BBLS litigation

Herbert Smith Freehills LLP have published an article in Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law on the government's Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) and the anticipated focus areas for litigation against BBLS lenders now that collection and recovery activities have begun.

During the pandemic, the coronavirus loan schemes provided more than £75bn of government funding, overseen by the British Business Bank. The BBLS was the largest of these schemes by both number of applications and total amounts lent, with lending in excess of £47bn across more than 1.5 million applications. BBLS applications closed at the end of March 2021.

The influx of complaints and claims is expected to follow the customer journey. To date, these have mostly related to declined or delayed applications; however, numbers are starting to increase as repayments begin and lenders begin collection and recovery activities. In our article we examine the litigation risks which lenders will need to take into account when engaging with such customer complaints and claims.

The article can be found here: Overview of anticipated focus areas for BBLS litigation. This article first appeared in the February 2022 edition of JIBFL.