The UK government’s £1.5-billion loan guarantee to help Jaguar Land Rover after a major cyberattack falls outside the “normal underwriting criteria”, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
In a 25 September letter seen by FT, UK Export Finance Chief Executive Tim Reid told Business Secretary Peter Kyle that the overall risk in relation to the carmaker after the August cyberattack was “acceptable”, with “adequate premium” as financial compensation. But “the quantum of exposure that UKEF could be required to take on a single entity relative to the overall size of its portfolio is high and occurs at a time of great uncertainty for the firm”.
“This would therefore fall outside UKEF’s normal underwriting criteris agreed with HM Treasury,” Reid wrote in the letter.
JLR Bailout
On 29 September 2025, the UK government announced that JLR will receive £1.5 billion loan to ease the strain on suppliers hit by a production halt at the automaker that was triggered by a cyberattack.
The loan, to be provided by a commercial bank and guaranteed by UK Export Finance, will be repaid over five years. It came after the Range Rover maker idled plants in the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Brazil and India as a result of the cyberattack earlier this month, derailing the wider supply chain.
“This loan guarantee will help support the supply chain and protect skilled jobs in the West Midlands, Merseyside and throughout the UK,” UK Business Secretary Kyle had said then.
JLR resumed production in the days that followed.
JLR Fallout
The JLR cyberattack cost the British economy an estimated £1.9 billion and affected more than 5,000 organisations, according to a report by the Cyber Monitoring Centre—an independent, not-for-profit organisation in the UK.
Losses could be higher if there were unexpected delays to the restoration of production at the vehicle manufacturer to levels before the hack took place in August.
“This incident appears to be the most economically damaging cyber event to hit the UK, with the vast majority of the financial impact being due to the loss of manufacturing output at JLR and its suppliers,” the report stated.