The British Business Bank delivers a product to the financial markets known as the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG). This product is administered via a web portal which is currently built using code which is expensive to maintain and lacks flexibility for future development and growth.

We are therefore seeking an experienced developer to initially build a new web portal with sufficient capacity and flexibility to support the planned EFG growth and allow the Bank to develop further guarantee products and to provide support to this portal and possible other similar products/portals in the future.

Background:

The Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) programme administered by the British Business Bank has been enabling accredited lenders to provide additional debt finance to small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) since 2009. It can be used where an SME has a sound borrowing proposal that is capable of repayment of the debt but has inadequate security to meet the lender’s normal security requirements for the debt. In such a scenario, a lender can use EFG to provide the security which the SME is unable to provide for itself and in doing so, enables the SME to access funding that would otherwise be unavailable.

EFG is administered via the EFG Web Portal. Lenders use the EFG Web Portal to manage the full lifecycle of their EFG lending:

1) As an aid to assessment of the borrower’s eligibility under the programme;

2) To make a facility offer and subsequently record its drawdown;

3) To record ‘in-life’ changes to a facility already guaranteed;

4) To record repayment;

5) To make a guarantee claim (if the Borrower defaults) and to record any subsequent recoveries;

6) Recording “in-life” changes on the EFG Web Portal ensures the Guarantee Fee charged to the Borrower is calculated accurately and collected in a timely manner.

Current Portal:

The current web portal has been built using a code base that is expensive and not widely available in the UK market (Ruby on Rails). The design of the existing Web Portal has been iterative and has occurred as a result of policy changes which has resulted in a complex architecture that is becoming increasingly difficult to change and maintain.

Further significant product changes are planned and we want to build a new Web Portal with sufficient capacity and flexibility to support the planned EFG growth and allow BBB to develop further guarantee products.

We want to re-architect the Web Portal to allow for future flexibility migrating to a more cost effective code base e.g. Java or .NET

Requirement:

To support the Bank’s business objectives, the EFG Web Portal must provide a solution that is flexible and scalable i.e. highly configurable, easy and quick to change to support rapid growth without losing sight on standardisation and cost effectiveness.

The EFG Web Portal project is seeking an experienced developer to

— re-build the Web Portal with a new strategic code by October 2019,

— provide ongoing BAU and development support to the Bank and the Portal for 3 years from launch of the new Portal.

A new architecture with flexibility built in by design will reduce the current operational risk and allow for future development and enhance user experience.