- Business activities and investments are financed in all installments and processing is simplified
The Secretary of State for Economy and Business Support, Ana de la Cueva, has presided over the signing of the collaboration agreements of the ICO Lines 2019 between the president of the Official Credit Institute (ICO), José Carlos García de Quevedo, and the representatives of the main financial entities.
In this event the ten most active credit institutions participated in the granting of ICO loans during the past year: Bankia, Bankinter, Abanca, Banco Sabadell, BBVA, Caixabank, Santander, Unicaja, Caja Rural de Teruel and Ibercaja.
The ICO Lines finance the activity of freelancers, SMEs, companies and entrepreneurs both in Spain (ICO Companies and Entrepreneurs Line, ICO Commercial Credit Line) and abroad (ICO International Line, ICO Exporters Line, ICO International Channel Line).
The Lines this year show improvements in their conditions to adapt more efficiently to the financing needs of companies:
- The 2019 ICO Lines finance business activities – both investment and liquidity – in terms between 1 and 20 years.
- The periods of lack to the client are extended for the operations formalized to a term superior to 10 years, offering the option of 3 years of lack of capital. In this way, companies are allowed a greater adaptation of the financing terms to their commercial and expansion plans.
- Measures are implemented to simplify the processing, procedures and management of operations.
- With regard to the control and verification processes of the ICO Lines, improvements are introduced and evolved towards models aligned with European counterparts.
- Specialized lines are maintained, among others, the ICO-Reciprocal Guarantee Company Line that complete the product offer.
With all these improvements, the ICO makes flexible and adapts the characteristics of its Lines to the financial needs of companies and freelancers to favor their growth, activity and investments in Spain and their internationalization in third markets.
ICO lines 2018
The ICO Lines have financed more than 41,440 operations for approximately 2,500 million euros in 2018. Once the financial institutions have normalized their credit offer and the companies have more liquidity, the ICO has focused its strategy on providing added value to business financing, supporting activities that support economic growth, job creation and the positioning of companies abroad.
The ICO Lines stand out for their great capillarity. Of the total financing and operations carried out in 2018, more than 1,600 million euros have been distributed in loans subscribed by companies with less than 50 workers. The number of loans granted to companies with less than 10 workers represents 65% of the total operations, if we also take into account companies with up to 50 employees, the percentage rises to more than 90%.
The ICO Mediation Lines are also useful for companies with 50 to 250 workers. These types of companies have formalized 10% of the operations carried out in 2018, for an amount exceeding 700 million euros.
By regions, the most active Autonomous Communities in ICO loans were Catalonia, where 18% of the total was distributed, followed by Galicia (12%), Andalusia (10.4%), the Valencian Community (10.3%) and Madrid (9.3%)
It should be noted that 41.5% of the total loans provided in 2018 correspond to the Lines designed to boost both the export activity of companies and their internationalization.
