NatWest taps five billion pounds in Bank of England COVID funds

LONDON (Reuters) – State-backed lender NatWest Group tapped 5 billion pounds ($6.47 billion) from a Bank of England fund set up to help struggling small businesses in the pandemic, BoE data on Thursday showed.

NatWest has been the biggest user of the so-called ‘TFSME’ scheme so far, which has extended 14.3 billion pounds of cheap funding to lenders near the rock bottom BoE interest rate of 0.1%.

Nationwide Building Society drew down the second largest amount, at 3.2 billion pounds, followed by Santander’s UK unit at 2.5 billion pounds.

($1 = 0.7732 pounds)

(Reporting by Iain Withers, editing by Huw Jones)