Case Study: British Business Bank scales pandemic loan delivery with thoughtbot

British Business Bank scales COVID loan delivery with thoughtbot, supporting nearly 80% of UK SMB finance

thoughtbot partnered with the British Business Bank, a government-owned development bank, to rebuild and strengthen the architecture of their key application. The challenge was to create a scalable and secure platform capable of adapting to urgent new demands, which became critical when the UK government rapidly introduced emergency loan schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic to support businesses.

The solution involved thoughtbot providing full-stack Ruby on Rails development, API creation, and cloud migration support. They rebuilt the application for flexibility and then specifically implemented the backend and frontend for the new loan schemes, later migrating the system to Azure. The platform they developed loaned over £78 billion, supporting nearly 80% of the UK's smaller business finance market, and the Guarantees Portal API was shortlisted for a 2021 Banking Tech Award for its COVID-19 response.

British Business Bank