Should entrepreneurs and small businesses take out the bounce back loan given by the government? It would almost be daft not to even if you don’t immediately need the support during the pandemic.

If your business needs more than £50,000 to trade through the Covid-19 crisis, Bounce Back loans are not for you. CBILS offers loans of up to £5m, but you can’t apply for support from both schemes (though you may be able to take a Bounce Back loan now and apply to convert it to CBILS support later on if you subsequently need to borrow more).

For businesses with modest needs, however, Bounce Back looks like a great deal. Even if you don’t need additional finance at this time, the scheme could be an economic way to repay any more expensive debt you currently have outstanding – credit card or overdraft finance, for example. There’s no need to prove you need a Bounce Back loan to survive the crisis, or even that your business is in financial difficulty.

Nor is the scheme limited to smaller businesses. In theory, even the largest companies are eligible to participate, assuming they’re only looking for finance of up to £50,000.

In short, the Bounce Back loans scheme looks like a great deal for very large numbers of businesses, irrespective of whether they’re suffering at the hands of Covid-19. Read the small print before making a decision about whether to apply, but it’s worth exploiting every possible opportunity in the current environment.