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Financial empowerment for disabled entrepreneurs
If you’re a disabled entrepreneur you make up around 25% of the UK’s 5.5m small business population. By helping to create equal opportunities for you and your business, the Lilac Review estimates that £230bn could be added to the economy.
Being a founding signatory of the Disability Finance Code for Entrepreneurship and a steering board member of the Lilac Review means we are committed to better understanding the challenges and support you might need to start or grow a disabled-led business.
We’re working with partners to help break down barriers
Our approach is not a one-size fits all and we will continue to listen, learn, and understand the varied needs across your community to tailor and evolve our products and services.
The Lilac Review is a government-backed independent review that aims to tackle the inequality faced by disabled-led businesses and level-up entrepreneurial opportunity across the UK.
Disabled business founders explain why the Lilac Review is important.
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Video transcript
Cornel Hrisca-Munn, Group Customer Disability Manager, Lloyds Bank
From lived experience and from a professional experience, the challenges I've seen for disabled founders come from a number of sides of a society that's not really built for them, and a lot of disabled people have actually thrived, in spite of this.
And what I'd like to see in terms of support for disabled founders is accessibility across the board, in terms of formats, in terms of simplification of access to finance, in access to business support. And also, maybe some more mentorship from people that have been there before, been there and done that.
With a quarter of entrepreneurs being disabled, sometimes out of necessity as an alternative to employment, it's key that they have that support in place so that they can economically have equality and maybe even go above and beyond with their business and be a real success and help them to thrive.
The Lilac Review is fantastic, isn't it, really. It's an amazing piece of work that is still ongoing to highlight the amount of disabled founders. There are disabled people out there with thriving businesses, who are out there and want to succeed.
And The Lilac Review is so important to myself personally and a lot of disabled people in that it's aiming to identify some of the barriers that exist, identify some of the challenges and provide real tangible solutions with some really influential bodies involved.
The UK government and Lloyds Banking Group and their banks. And the amazing work that Small Business Britain has done across the board here to close that inequality between disabled entrepreneurs and non-disabled entrepreneurs. It's such a key aspect of The Lilac Review and I'm really thrilled to see how far it's come and really where it's going.
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The Lilac Review
Lilacreview.com
A note on language: for simplicity, we refer to the Equality Act definition of disability, that is if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. We recognise there is no single consensus on how to talk about disability. The word ‘disability’ covers a wide range of conditions, manifests in an array of differing lived experiences, and is understood in different ways.
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Access to mentoring
We have collaborated with Small Business Britain and Digital Boost to launch a mentoring programme designed by, and for, disabled entrepreneurs.
Through an online platform, you'll be matched with mentors who share similar lived experiences who can offer their relevant business expertise to support you and your business journey.
Naidex 2025
Join us at Naidex, the National Accessibility, Inclusion & Disability Expo taking place on 19th-20th March at the NEC Birmingham.
Naidex Expo
Discover new assistive technology, explore career options, connect with the disability community and more.
Come and chat to us on stand BWB-J190.
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