This latest episode of Infra Dig – the IJGlobal podcast service – sees the focus return to the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) for an update on progress.

IJGlobal editorial director Angus Leslie Melville pulls up a chair for a fireside chat with UKIB head of banking and investments Ian Brown for an interesting discussion on the institution's development.

The podcast can be freely accessed on Amazon Podcasts, Player FM as well as the iVoox service, in addition to any number of other podcast service providers where Infra Dig is picked up.

IJGlobal has been tracking UKIB’s performance as it builds a team in the north of England – Leeds – and seeks to achieve its mandate of crowding in lending activity and stepping up where other lenders fear to tread, as well as deploying equity to drive crucial investments.

UKIB is sitting ready with £22 billion of capital to invest and lend across local authority lending and guarantees, with £8 billion of that earmarked for debt/equity on transactions across the UK where it pioneers or crowds in.

Having already closed 20 transactions, Brown is confident that UKIB will continue to deploy capital in the coming months and the bank has its ducks lined up to

“We have a pretty strong pipeline through to the end of our financial year – through to March – where we will be doing a range of things with the debt, equity and guarantees as well,” said Brown.

“What has been really encouraging of late is that the amount of potential transactions we are seeing has increased significantly and – now that we are much better resourced than we were, certainly when you spoke to John 12 months ago – we are able to process these transactions much more rapidly.”

Tune in to this latest episode of Infra Dig for a qualified view of what the UK Infrastructure Bank is up to, and then browse the growing library of podcasts – all open access on Spotify and any number of other services – for up-to-date views on the infrastructure and energy finance world.