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Supporting business

How we're supporting businesses in the UK to grow and prosper.

English pub with customer talking to bar staff

Empowering British businesses is central to our core purpose of Helping Britain Prosper. We are proud to be by the side of a diverse range of British businesses.

Our aim is to create an inclusive environment that empowers growth and development and we believe we can only prosper when businesses and communities across all parts of the UK have the right opportunities to succeed.

£26.5 billion

Of Commercial Banking sustainable finance since 2022.

900,000

Businesses and entrepeneurs supported with leading digital and relationship banking services, as they start up, grow and thrive.

>80,000

Budinesses supported through Lloyds Bank Academy.

>32k

Hours of support for over 9000 Black, women and disabled entrepeneurs.

>100,000

Small businesses and charities helped with new banking in 2024.

£17.5 billion

Of sustainable finance supported in 2024.

During 2024, we have continued to help finance critical infrastructure projects, which are key to the UK’s future prosperity and with many core to helping the UK reach its net zero target. Businesses had access to our regular economic updates and insight, helping them to understand changing business sentiment.

 

Download full factsheet

Our support across different sectors

Black-led businesses

In 2024, we engaged over 5,000 Black entrepreneurs with over 20,000 hours of support through the events and initiatives that make up the programme. We have also had over 13,500 visits to our Black business hub through the year.

These include partnering with Channel 4 in 2023 to launch 'Black in Business' initiative, renewed until 2025, and by supporting grassroot organisations and events like Geared for Growth, and the  Immerse programme with Foundervine.

Black in Business initiative

Our partnership with Channel 4 to provide Black businesses with £500,000 worth of TV advertising resulted in 21 million views of these commercials; we have renewed this partnership for 2025. Each winner reported significant growth in brand awareness and opportunities arising from the campaign. 

Grant funding and expert mentor sessions were provided to five ‘Rising Stars’, who reported this support contributed to increased revenue, operational efficiency and team morale.

Sustainable businesses

Our Sustainability & ESG Financing team, created in 2021, is supporting our Corporate and Institutional clients with an increasing volume of Sustainability and ESG-linked loan transactions having contribute £26.5bn of sustainable finance since 2022.

Since 2018, over 4,800 instances of ESG training have been undertaken by Commercial Banking colleagues. We have worked with a variety of the leading universities and institutions in sustainability such as the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), Edinburgh Innovations and Exeter University, to provide foundational ESG courses that focus on sustainability, up to and including the design and development of advanced and sector-specific specialist training.

During 2024, we supported £1.2bn in sustainable funding to the Social Housing sector, helping housing associations make their homes warmer and more energy efficient and we’ve now committed an additional £30 billion in sustainable financing by the end of  2026.

Housing

Through relationships with over 300 Housing Associations, we’ve provided over £19.5 billion of funding to the social housing sector since 2018. During 2024, we have supported the delivery of £1.2 billion of new sustainable finance.

We have renewed our partnership with Regeneration Brainery for another three years to help tackle the skills shortage in the UK property sector – giving young people hands-on experience and mentorship opportunities.

Regeneration Brainery has won multiple awards for delivering positive social impact, and has been named as the UK Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum’s (UKREiiF) charity partner for a second consecutive year. Since its creation in 2017, it’s worked with over 6,000 students – or Brainees – finding hands-on work experience and meaningful networking opportunities with property professionals.

 

Manufacturing

We expect to exceed our commitment of supporting the training and upskilling of more than 6,000 apprentices, graduates and engineers in manufacturing by the end of 2029.

Women Entrepreneurs

As part of our ongoing commitment to the Investing in Women Code, we are dedicating resources to initiatives that promote the growth and scaling of women-led businesses through improvements in access to finance, networks and other key resources. Lloyds Banking Group is also actively involved with the Invest in Women Taskforce. Backed by DBT, the taskforce aims to enable more women to start and grow their businesses.

We have engaged over 3,000 women entrepreneurs with over 11,000 hours of support through events and initiatives in 2024. We have continued to work with partners such as Leeds Business School at Leeds Beckett University for the #WECAN project and sponsored the Female Founders Rise community in 2024.

In addition, we continue to engage with the Women in Manufacturing initiative, a network of industry and academic professionals dedicated to promoting inclusion in the sector. We have supported the ‘Changing Perceptions’ conference in September for the second year and continue to work with individuals and businesses in the industry to produce content such as articles and podcasts to discuss how inclusion will support the skills gap.

Disabled Entrepreneurs

In 2024, we have continued to listen and learn from the disabled entrepreneur community, whilst progressing actions internally and helping to convene the ecosystem on systemic change. 

We have collaborated with Small Business Britain to host networking events, provide mentorship and learning opportunities, and promote visibility of disabled role models – all aimed at empowering disabled entrepreneurs to thrive. We are also co-creating new propositions and services with active consultation on the design process by disabled entrepreneurs to enable better outcomes for customers.

We were proud to host the launch of the Lilac Review – an independent, government-backed initiative designed to identify and overcome the barriers faced by disabled business owners. The Lilac Review’s Interim Report was an in-depth study that explored the challenges faced by disabled entrepreneurs including the structural barriers encountered when starting and growing a business.

In December 2024, we became a founding signatory of the Disability Finance Code for Entrepreneurship, backed by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), and designed to increase the pipeline of disabled entrepreneurs accessing finance across the industry. In 2025, we will be evidencing our commitment towards the code objectives.

Archived factsheets
 

February 2023 factsheet
See how we supported businesses last year.

Business Banking Financial Assistance Team (BBFA)

We often hear that small businesses are the lifeblood of the UK economy, but the last few years have been the most traumatic that most of them will ever experience. 

Throughout the pandemic we played a central role in providing financial support through the UK Government schemes in order to tide small businesses over.

And now we’ve been considering how we can best help our customers to recover.

​​​​​​​To address these changing customer needs, we’ve formed a Business Banking Financial Assistance Team (BBFA).

The team was set up initially to support business customers who were facing into the storm, and now it plays a crucial part in our role of supporting the UK's recovery.

Contact the BBFA team on 0800 302 9946

Business recovery hub

The Lloyds Bank business recovery hub provides information on improving your cash flow, what to do if your business is falling behind on payments, and making changes in your business.

Visit the hub

News and insight