We have been working with British businesses for hundreds of years, striving to meet their needs and helping them achieve their ambitions.

Supporting businesses is part of our core purpose of helping Britain prosper,  and  

Britain  can  only  truly  prosper  when  it’s  inclusive  of  all communities.

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As  CEO  for  Business  and  Commercial Banking,  which  supports  start-ups through to mid-sized corporates, I know how important entrepreneurs are to the UK’s future prosperity.

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We passionately believe that all businesses should have the same opportunities to succeed as each other but we recognise through what Black business communities are telling us that there’s still much work to do to create an equitable landscape.

It’s  sobering  to  hear  first-hand  the  experiences,  thoughts  and  feelings  of Black  entrepreneurs  and  this  report,  in  its  second  year,  again  makes  for uncomfortable reading.

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We’ve  made  a  commitment  within  our  Race  Action  Plan  to  help  create equity for Black entrepreneurs. We pledge to use our influence to make bigger  and  faster  changes  and  we’ll  hold  ourselves  to  account  on  our progress.

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Continuing to listen to Black business owners is a crucial step in building trust and following the inaugural report in 2021, we collectively developed ten recommendations as a charter for action, informed by the Black Business Advisory  Committee  (BBAC),  Community  Leaders  and  Black  business owners.

Alongside our fantastic partners including the BBAC, Black Business Network (BBN) and Foundervine we’ve launched a number of initiatives aligned to these  recommendations.  These  include  the  Immerse  programme,  and sponsorship of the Black Investor 360 Finance Festival. We have formed relationships with Black-owned national and regional grassroots organisations to support events and initiatives aligned to our collective mission of enabling Black-owned businesses to thrive; such as Jamii,  Black  Owned  Business  Exhibition  (BOB  Expo)  and  the  UK Black Business Show. We’ve established more than one hundred mentoring relationships as part of our partnership with Mentor Black Business, and have committed to one hundred more.  We are also developing a Supply Chain Diversity programme to ensure our supply base represents the communities we serve.

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While  I’m  proud  to  see  the  impact  these  initiatives  are  having, there’s  still  a  long  way  to  go.  We,  our  financial  services  peers, government, and other institutions, share a collective responsibility to do more. And we will do more.

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You can find out more about: our support for Black-owned businesses on our dedicated Black Business Hub, the progress we have made so far aligned to the ten recommendations, and our Race Action Plan.

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Elyn Corfield

CEO, Business &

Commercial Banking

Lloyds Banking Group