Boost in the spotlight: The Rosebud Fund

Boost's Business Support Spotlight series highlights the wealth of support listed on Boost’s Support Hub and available to Lancashire businesses. Today’s spotlight shines on The Rosebud Fund.

How do you help Lancashire businesses?

The Rosebud Fund is designed specifically to help growing Lancashire businesses by providing business loans from £10,000 to £300,000 which are fair, affordable and transparent.

Our loans can be used to fund working capital, purchase plant and machinery or hire new staff to give a few examples. In addition to finance, we offer business support to our customers through Boost, thereby giving them both the funding and assistance required to succeed.

Why do Lancashire businesses need your support?

Often, but not always, the businesses we are speaking to have been unable to access finance elsewhere. We like to use common sense when assessing a proposition and judge every case on its own merits. Serviceability of any loan is paramount but as a growth fund, which is backed by Lancashire County Council, we also place importance on factors like job creation and economic benefit.

How are you helping Lancashire businesses overcome the economic challenges of coronavirus?

Firstly, we launched the Rosebud Rebound Fund, which is aimed at those businesses who are still growing or looking to return to growth. To assist with cash flow during these challenging times, we can offer tailored repayment structures and are able to defer arrangement fees for up to 12 months.

We have also streamlined our underwriting process for loans of up to £50,000 to make getting funding faster. Secondly, we have supported our existing portfolio by offering repayment holidays where appropriate to help those businesses whose cash flow has been negatively impacted.

What are the other key challenges for Lancashire businesses at the moment?

In my view, the key challenge for Lancashire businesses in the coming months is managing their cash flow. There are various downward pressures such as lost or delayed revenue, changes to the furlough scheme, payment holidays coming to an end, taxes falling due, and, of course, Brexit. My advice would be to deeply understand your cash flow, produce a detailed forecast and measure performance against it.

What’s the future for the Lancashire economy?

Despite all of the doom and gloom, the future is undeniably bright! The Rosebud portfolio is a fantastic example of this. Several customers are going against the grain, demonstrating growth and investing significantly in their future.

Matt Robinson, fund manager, Rosebud.