The Bank of England and HM Treasury have announced a one-year extension to the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS). This extension will provide lenders with continued certainty over the availability of cheap funding to support lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) during 2015, even in the event of stress in bank funding markets. The FLS has contributed to a substantial fall in bank funding costs since its launch in mid-2012. That has fed through to improvements in credit conditions for households and businesses.