Samir Parkash, interim CEO of UKEF, has today announced that Virgin Money is the latest financial institution to be onboarded onto the General Export Facility (GEF), opening up access to financial support to their business customers.

GEF was launched in March 2021 and is designed to provide access to flexible finance for SME exporters.

It has been a game-changing product unlocking almost £250million of working capital loans.

Virgin Money joins six existing lenders; HSBC, Santander, Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest and Newable, making the General Export Facility even more accessible.

Commenting on the UK Export Finance’s General Export Facility, Westminster’s CFO, Mark Hughes, said:

“As an organisation Westminster provides security products and solutions to governments and businesses around the world and access to capital to support our larger projects is critical in delivering on our growth potential.

“We have found both Virgin Money and UKEF to be very supportive and we are delighted to be the first organisation to benefit from a Virgin Money GEF which has enabled us to secure important new export contracts to supply X-Ray security machines to two international airports in Southern Africa.

“We believe having access to the GEF programme going forward will enable us to secure and fund many more import and large-scale export contracts.”  

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Sharon Ellis, Head of Business Networks at Virgin Money said:

“Virgin Money is committed to supporting businesses with their growth ambitions at this key time for the economy.

“We are pleased to be fully operational with the General Export Facility in conjunction with UKEF, as it enables us to increase access to financial support for businesses like Westminster Group, which is a great example of our relationship teams and trade finance specialists working together to find exactly the right solution to meet the customer’s needs.”

For further information on UKEF and the General Export Facility please visit Gov.UK here

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