Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am pleased to announce that my officials have received a business plan for the development bank of Wales, which remains on target for its launch in the first half of next year, subject to regulatory approval. The bank will be headquartered in north Wales, and its key priority is to help micro to medium businesses in Wales access finance more easily, and specifically to address funding gaps where market failure exists. Working alongside other financial providers, the development bank of Wales will maximise private sector leverage. Working alongside Business Wales, the bank will provide a range of support services and management advice. Better funding, better support will make for better business. Finance Wales have consulted widely with key stakeholders to ensure their business plan takes account of the financial issues businesses faces, and to identify appropriate solutions.

I am particularly pleased that they have developed a close working relationship with the Office of National Statistics in Newport, and will also be engaging with academia. They are creating an intelligence unit to track the range of financial issues that businesses in Wales face from time to time, and identify how these could be best addressed for the benefit of the Welsh economy. This intelligence unit will develop into a strategic research function, generating a range of innovative new solutions from co-investment funds to tailored industry-specific funds. In this way, the bank will help individual businesses to grow turnover and jobs, while collectively helping to grow the economy of Wales.

The development bank will increase funding support to Welsh businesses, with a target to provide more than £1 billion of investment support over the next five years. I say ‘more than’ because I want the development bank to be ambitious and to explore innovative ways to improve private sector leverage. The bank will create and safeguard over 5,500 jobs per year by 2022. The bank is tasked with increasing direct investment levels to £80 million per year. I am also challenging the bank to continuously improve its value for money, and to work towards ambitious private sector leverage to reduce cost per job. It will work closely with Business Wales to ensure that funding support comes with the necessary leadership, mentoring and training support to help entrepreneurial and growing businesses be successful. I am challenging the bank to improve the simplicity and accessibility of its digital platform. I am keen to see it work with Business Wales to create a single point of access gateway and increase the number of businesses that receive advice from Welsh Government from the current level of 30,000 per year.

The bank will be able to support programmes across a number of portfolios, including those that fall under my esteemed colleague Carl Sargeant Assembly Member, the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children. It will continue to work with colleagues in housing on the successful Help to Buy—Wales scheme, and deliver our £290 million investment in a second phase to support the construction of over 6,000 new homes by 2021. The extension of the Help to Buy—Wales scheme has been widely welcomed by aspiring home owners and house builders alike. The extension will also help the Government to meet its manifesto commitment to make an additional 20,000 affordable homes available across Wales. Plus, there is also the new £136 million Wales business fund that I announced back in September. This fund, jointly backed by the Welsh Government and the European Union, will be a mainstay of the bank, as it will offer flexible funding solutions to hundreds of Welsh SMEs over the next seven years.

The development bank will seek to strengthen and grow the financial ecosystem in Wales. It will not seek to crowd out or compete with other financial providers, but rather work with them to support their funding for businesses. It will work alongside business and banks, providing top-up finance where necessary. The credit crunch saw widespread failure in the financial markets across the world and caused the deepest global recession in a generation.

Today, in Wales, the financial markets have been slowly but steadily reopening to support our recovery, but market failure still exists in areas like micro and small businesses, in start-up companies and in entrepreneurial businesses where the business model is not proven. The development bank recognises how difficult equity finance remains for small and medium-sized businesses. The bank will host an angel investor network across Wales and encourage equity investment in growing Welsh businesses through a joint angel co-investment fund. As medium-sized businesses plan to grow, the bank will facilitate links to larger equity houses in London. It will also help Welsh businesses access crowdfunding and other innovative sources of funding.

As the economy continues to recover, we expect the nature and scale of market failure to alter and I’m pleased to see that the bank will monitor market conditions and changing business needs, responding accordingly with new products and new approaches. As a not-for-profit organisation, I expect the bank to have an affinity with mutual and social enterprises, including support for co-ops, employee buy-outs and credit unions. I am asking the bank to shadow the National Infrastructure Commission and to explore opportunities for partnership.

As the development bank makes private finance more readily available, the need for Government grant support will diminish. By providing funding support through the development bank and maximising private finance leverage, the development bank will help to dramatically improve value for money for Welsh Government and Welsh taxpayers. I believe the development bank will become a strong Welsh brand, providing positive funding support where it is most needed to maximise the beneficial effect for the Welsh economy. I am now asking my officials to engage with all key stakeholders across Wales to ensure that the new business plan for the development bank of Wales fully meets the needs of businesses and helps each to realise its potential.

The development bank of Wales is a clear signal of the strategic approach we are taking to deliver a Wales that is more prosperous and secure. It is an example of how we are enabling the conditions needed to allow businesses to thrive and to create and retain high-quality jobs. The progress we are making shows how we want to focus our interventions on delivering greater financial security for businesses so that they can build growth and prosperity for all.