A major government initiative designed to provide low-cost funding for small and medium sized businesses to grow may bring more contracting opportunities.
The Funding for Lending scheme has been a controversial one almost from the very start as it was launched last August. The FLS, as an initiative that has a goal of making it easier for prospective home owners to secure mortgages and businesses – especially SMEs – to gain access to business loans, has been successful in reducing the interest rates on these lending products but has had an unfortunate knock-on effect of reducing the rates of return on savings products as well, leaving savers high and dry even as increased funding is being released to prospective home buyers and SMEs looking to expand.
Savers saw some light at the end of the tunnel in that the initiative was scheduled to run until January of next year, but now the Chancellor of the Exchequer has decided to extend FLS, possibly through 2015. This spells good news for SMEs looking for increased funding options, and many industry experts believe that keeping FLS going for an extended period of time will result in these SMEs expanding and being able to take on more contract workers and freelancers either as sole traders or as part of an umbrella company’s workforce.
SMEs are an absolute wonderful source of employment opportunities for the interim worker in the UK, notably because the flexibility of using a contractor or freelancer is so very appealing to a smaller firm looking to manage its outgoings very closely while still accomplishing major goals. With the economy in the state that it’s in right now, sometimes a ‘major goal’ can be as simple as keeping the doors open and the lights on, and when you’re already struggling to keep a business afloat the last thing you need is to have your bottom line suffer because of a bloated payroll bogged down by too many permanent workers; by using contractors instead, a firm can use a worker only for when they’re needed to complete projects, which is a major advantage indeed!
So yes, it’s not good news for anyone looking to keep their savings pots and make them grow, but the extension of the FLS is likely to help the economic recovery overall by both making it easier for SMEs to expand and also facilitate these same SMEs to take on more freelancers than ever before. Just one more reason that contract working is becoming the wave of the future!
