Investment Centre
Accessing finance is the biggest challenge for most businesses.
We design and manage grant and loan funds for businesses to make it easier for them to survive and thrive. Providing public, private and third sector partners with fund management capacity and expertise to make the highest impact at low risk, achieving maximum value for money.
Over the last 15 years, we’ve managed grant and loan programmes defraying over £300m to more than 75,000 businesses, sole traders and charities, from the smallest start-ups to established blue chips. We have helped to create or safeguard over 40,000 jobs and leveraging over £600m of additional private sector investment.
Supporting Businesses with Access to Finance and Funding
By balancing pragmatism with stretching targets, we look for ways to deliver against our partners’ objectives not limited by contractual terms and KPIs.
We don’t operate a one-size-fits-all solution, we can plug in modules to suit different needs and can tailor the intensity of support you’re looking for, from delivering components of a programme through to fully outsourced fund management.
Business Grants
We help partners who are looking to stimulate economic growth or social impact, or are responding to market shocks or emergencies, by the distribution of grant funding. Whether high volume, small value revenue grants, voucher schemes or targeted large capital investments, we provide a robust modular approach to ensure money gets to the businesses that need it at the time they need it.
Our approach to grant administration has been rigorously audited and was cited as best practice by the European Audit Authority.
Business Loans
Innovative loan funding solutions, providing unsecured and secured loan capital to ambitious, high growth small and medium sized businesses.
Our experienced team of former business, commercial and corporate bankers operate at pace conducting robust due diligence to de-risk growth projects and maximise returns to stakeholders. From stimulating deal flow, through to intensive portfolio management, they have significant expertise and knowledge across a wide range of sectors.
Blended Finance
Businesses in receipt of grants to reduce risk often see significant growth. Wouldn’t it be nice, as we share the risk at the start of a project if we could share the returns later?
We can allocate grants blended with loans or equity; this is blended finance.
Aligning objectives means we can design and deliver funds that unlock opportunities in businesses, improve access to finance, accelerate project delivery, drive economic growth, and create returns to the fund for reinvestment. These new funds could be repayable grants or grants combined with loans to deliver finance interventions, through to debt/equity only schemes, helping limited budgets go further.
Consultancy
With over 15 years’ experience of delivering publicly funded grant and loan schemes, we’re able to provide expertise and capacity to compliment or develop in-house funding programmes.
- We provide advice on the overall design of your scheme
- Help you defray more funding
- Provide support for challenges, such as tricky state aid cases
- Develop the skills you already have
- Prepare bids to funding bodies to establish a new grant or loan scheme
- Provide general capacity to manage demand, including:
- due diligence services
- front-end web applications
- assessment services, and
- making payments to grantees.
Our last 3 years in numbers
- 23,736 Businesses Supported
- £128.3m Grants Defrayed
- £8.4m Loans Defrayed
- £95.2m Leveraged Private Sector Investment
- 2,849 Jobs Created or Safeguarded
Case Studies
Let’s Grow Programme
The Let’s Grow Programme provided grants from £25,000 to £1m to cover up to 30% of costs to invest, expand and create or safeguard jobs. Let’s Grow was funded by the Regional Growth Fund, local authorities in the North East and Tees Valley and the York and North Yorkshire Enterprise Partnership.
Tees Valley Business Compass
Tees Valley Business Compass was a local Growth Hub for the Teesside area, providing support and funding for ambitious companies looking to grow. Supporting thousands of local businesses, using European Regional Development Funding (ERDF) secured by Tees Valley Combined Authority, it helped to provide funding opportunities to secure grants and supplement growth.
Power to Change
Power to Change provided grants ranging between £50,000 and £500,000, distributed through several targeted programmes with different objectives. As well as providing money, Power to Change offered advice and support to strengthen community businesses.
COVID-19 Response Funds
Grants schemes for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and self-employed individuals delivered for The Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Tees Valley Combined Authority, York and North Yorkshire Enterprise Partnership and West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
SSI Emergency Response Taskforce
This scheme aimed to support all supply chain companies nationwide affected by the closure of the SSI steelworks in Redcar. It provided short term immediate grant aid in the form of working capital to support these companies to continue trading or to seek new business.
Business Growth Vouchers
As well as traditional grant schemes, UMi also delivers voucher schemes that enable small businesses to get expert help from the private sector to go further. We have delivered Business Growth Vouchers for the Department for Business and City of York Council.
UMi Debt Finance Scotland
UMi Debt Finance Scotland provides loan capital to small and medium sized businesses across Scotland. The £12m fund helps accelerate the growth of businesses in Scotland, complementing other private and public sector forms of funding. The Fund typically advances loans of £25,001 and £250,000 to support actively trading Scottish businesses.
Visit County Durham Digital Improvement Grant
A grant scheme to help tourism and hospitality businesses in County Durham recover from the Covid-19 pandemic by investing in digital technologies and professional services to help them secure more customers, increase their revenues and make them more productive.
Partners work with us because of our
Innovative & bespoke fund design
we implement the whole funding life cycle, from design to delivery covering all processes in-between
Transparent reporting & management
interactive dashboards and a dedicated account manager give you full visibility of a fund’s performance
Quick application, approval & payment process
our robust modular setup allows for seamless customer journeys
Due diligence
in depth knowledge of public funding rules, state aid and subsidy control is applied appropriately and proportionately including know your customer and anti-money laundering checks
Multi-channel customer support
delivered by a highly efficient, empathetic and supportive team via the applicant’s channel of choice
Robust governance & compliance
operating in line with FCA, ISO 9001:2015, and Cyber Essentials Plus with tried and tested processes
Industry leading deployment
the ability to deploy funds within days of conception via world class technology solutions, delivered with agility and entrepreneurial flair
B Corporation Certification
we meet rigorous and externally verified social and environmental standards, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profits with purpose
Get in Contact
If you have any queries, or need help and advice, please contact:
Simon Allen
Head of Public Sector Services
