Research and analysis

UK Export Finance: Economic impacts of our support 2025 to 2026

Published 9 July 2026

We estimate that £11.2 billion of new loans, insurance, and guarantees provided by UKEF in the 2025-26 financial year is expected to:

• Support the contribution of up to £6.4 billion to UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Support up to 85,000 UK Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) jobs.
• Of these jobs, up to 53,000 are estimated to be directly employed in the UK businesses or projects UKEF supports (direct) and up to 32,000 further jobs are estimated to be in their supply chains (indirect).

For the first time, UKEF has estimated the economic benefit of its activities for developing countries. We estimate that UKEF’s support for £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) of loans to developing countries are expected to:

• Support up to 64,000 jobs, of which 38,000 are estimated to be directly employed in the overseas businesses or projects UKEF supports (direct) and up to 25,000 further jobs are estimated to be in their supply chains (indirect).

Note: Figures may not sum due to rounding (nearest 1,000 for jobs).

1. Jobs and contribution to GDP supported modelling methodology

The methodology for both domestic and overseas estimates apply input-output (IO) analytical frameworks to translate UKEF-supported activity into estimates of contribution to GDP and jobs supported. Contribution to GDP refers to the estimate of Gross Value Added (GVA) supported which is the primary component of GDP – the commonly used measure of a nation’s economic output/income. GVA is equivalent to output minus intermediate consumption [footnote 1].

For domestic impacts, UKEF uses GVA and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) ‘effects’ and ‘multipliers’ derived from IO analytical tables published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) [footnote 2], [footnote 3]. These capture the GVA and employment intensity associated with additional demand for the output of each UK industry. GVA effects estimate the contribution to GVA generated by a £1 increase in final use, while FTE effects estimate the number of FTE jobs required to produce a £1 million increase in final demand. These effects are applied to the estimated value of domestic output supported by UKEF’s loans, guarantees and insurance products, matched to the relevant industry sectors, to derive total GVA and employment impacts, including direct and indirect supply chain effects.

We multiply the GVA effect by the (nominal) value of domestic output associated with UKEF support (see Key Assumptions below for further detail). For example, if the manufacture of air and spacecraft industry has a GVA effect of 0.7, then an increase in demand for that industry’s output of £1 million (for instance, due to a £1 million export contract won with UKEF’s financial support) will contribute £700,000 of GVA to the UK economy.

Similarly, FTE effects show how many FTE jobs are required to produce £1 million of output in a given industry – i.e. the “jobs intensity” of production. For example, if the manufacture of electrical equipment industry has an estimated FTE effect of 11, then 11 FTE jobs are required to produce £1 million of output for final use in the UK.

From the effects and multipliers published in the ONS input-output analytical tables, we can calculate both the ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ FTE effects for our domestic impacts. In the above example, some of the 11 extra jobs required by the manufacture of electrical equipment industry will be in the exporting firm itself, and some will be in the exporter’s domestic supply chain. Direct FTE effects would show the proportion of those 11 jobs that were required in the industry of the exporter, whereas indirect FTE effects would show the proportion of those 11 jobs required within the UK supply chain of the exporter, to facilitate the production of those goods and services. The breakdown of impacts by UKEF products is given in table 2.1 and is based on internal management information for each business supported by UKEF. Full definitions of UKEF products can be found in the Annual Report and Accounts [footnote 4].

Overseas impacts are estimated using the Joint Impact Model (JIM) [footnote 5]. This applies country- or region-specific IO tables and associated statistics (sourced from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) and ILOSTAT) to provide estimates of jobs supported in the destination countries for UKEF support. Unlike the domestic estimates however, jobs are measured in terms of headcount (number of people employed), not Full-Time Equivalents.

The JIM is flexible in the data inputs it requires which may vary for different institutions due to data availability. UKEF uses the “finance-enabled” approach to approximate the revenues (output) that it supports through its financing. Under this approach, UKEF-supported loan values are treated as capital inputs to the overseas borrower. Asset Turnover Ratios (ATRs) are applied to estimate the associated economic output. This output is introduced into the IO framework as a demand shock, allowing the JIM to estimate the resulting direct and supply chain impacts in the same way as our domestic IO model (see Key Assumptions below for further detail).

Similar input-output analysis methodologies have been used by the UK’s Department for Business and Trade to estimate the number of jobs supported by UK exports. The methodology is widely used by other Export Credit Agencies, including Export-Import Bank of the United States, Export Development Canada, SACE (Italy), and utilised by economic consultancies to estimate the economic impacts of private companies like Airbus and BAE Systems. The JIM is used by its members, including British International Investment, Swedbank and FMO, to estimate the impacts of their portfolios on developing countries.

In summary, estimates of jobs and GVA supported depend on:

Domestic impacts

• The total value of the export contracts or loans supported by UKEF.
• The share of export contracts or loans expected to be spent on UK goods and services – equivalent to the increase in the final use for UK output.
• The industry-average FTE jobs and GVA intensity of the businesses that UKEF supports.

Overseas impacts

• The value of UKEF guaranteed loans supporting an export contract.
• The ATRs assumed in the JIM that estimates the revenues (overseas output)
• The industry-average jobs intensity of the overseas borrowers that UKEF supports.

2. Results

Table 2.1: UKEF estimated support for UK FTE jobs and GDP contribution

	2025-26
	FTE jobs supported	Contribution to GDP
Direct	53,000	£3.9 bn
Indirect	32,000	£2.5 bn
Total	85,000	£6.4 bn
FTE jobs and GDP supported by Product
Buyer credit guarantee	22,000	£1.9 bn
Insurance	6,000	£0.7 bn
Bond or export working capital support	1,000	£0.1 bn
Direct loan	1,000	< £0.05 bn
General working capital	55,000	£3.7 bn

Note: Figures may not sum due to rounding (nearest 1,000 for FTE jobs and £0.1 billion for GDP)

Table 2.2: UKEF estimated support for jobs supported in developing countries

	2025-26
Jobs supported in developing countries
Direct	38,000
Indirect	25,000
Total	64,000

Note: Figures may not sum due to rounding (nearest 1,000 jobs)

3. Changes to the methodology since last year

Since last year’s publication on UKEF’s domestic economic impacts, we have updated the reference year of the ONS IO analytical tables to 2023 from 2022 which has resulted in changes to the GVA and FTE effects used in our analysis. The 2023 IO analytical tables are the latest published by the ONS. Other inputs such as the GDP deflator were also updated to the latest available data.

As mentioned above, the JIM is a new model that UKEF has deployed to produce estimates of jobs supported in developing countries.

4. Key Assumptions

4.1 Approximating UKEF’s support for domestic output

To generate estimates of economic impact, UKEF approximates the amount of domestic output associated with the export contracts it supports through its credit and insurance products – otherwise known as UK content. These UK content values are multiplied by the relevant industry effects, based on the industry of the UK exporter, to estimate FTE jobs and GVA supported.

Some UKEF support is not tied to an export contract. Our Export Development Guarantee, Supply Chain Discount and General Export Facility products are used to support non-contract specific working capital loans. Typically, we approximate the amount of domestic output associated with these working capital loans by assuming that the entire loan value is spent within the industry of the UKEF-supported business, thereby generating domestic output for final use.

4.2 Approximating UKEF’s support for overseas output

UKEF uses the values of the principal balance of the loans it guarantees or lends to overseas borrowers (i.e. capital which can be deployed by the borrowers) in conjunction of the ATRs in the JIM to estimate the revenues or output supported overseas. The ATRs are derived at the region-sector level using total private sector capital stock per sector and total output sector in seven regions.

Only UKEF support that supports financing for overseas borrowers in developing countries are in scope of the analysis. Forms of support that primarily benefit UK businesses (such as Export Development Guarantee, General Export Facility, Export Insurance Policies) are not included as they do not directly increase the financial capital/assets of overseas borrowers. We also exclude defence-related transactions where employment impacts are difficult to quantify in the JIM framework.

4.3 Allocation of industry sectors

To facilitate application of sector GVA and job intensity values, we assign Standard Industrial Classification codes to UK exporters (for domestic impacts) or GTAP sector codes to overseas borrowers (for overseas impacts). Where an exporter or borrower has multiple relevant sector codes, we average the intensities across relevant sectors.

For domestic impacts, where a contract involves multiple UK exporters, we allocate the effects based on the industries of the various exporters.

4.4 Input-output industry relationships

The input tables used by both domestic and overseas approaches are released with a lag. The latest ONS input-output (IO) tables use data from 2023 whilst the GTAP base year used in the JIM is 2017. The approaches therefore implicitly assume that the relationships captured across industries jobs, GVA and output hold for the latest financial year and beyond.

When estimating the impact on domestic UK employment, we account for the effects of inflation between the IO table reference year and the year of the analysis by using the GDP deflator to estimate the real value of domestic output. No such adjustment is made for estimating overseas impacts as the JIM handles inflation by calculating employment intensities across multiple years.

5. Limitations & Caveats

The domestic UK and overseas (JIM) methodologies do not estimate what would have happened without UKEF support, so estimates do not measure the additional contribution that UKEF’s support has made to the UK economy. In other words, our estimates represent jobs supported, not created and contributions to GDP supported, rather than pure additions.

Our estimates are a forward-looking view of the economic impacts expected from UKEF’s credit and insurance products issued in a given financial year. These impacts are expected to materialise over the coming years as UKEF supported loans and contracts are utilised to purchase UK goods and services over time (i.e. over the drawdown period of UKEF backed loans or within the coverage period of UKEF’s insurance policy).

GVA and jobs supported figures are based on expectations of UK content and domestic or overseas output at the time of business issuance within the financial year, rather than estimates of the increases in final demand, associated with UKEF support, during the financial year. As a result, our estimates are subject to uncertainty as the actual value of output that UKEF backs may vary from the estimates that we have at the time of issuing our support. For instance, the actual value of exports may change due to inflation or changes in project specification. Some loans may be pre-paid or not fully drawn down. For some products that are not linked to specific contracts, assumptions that financing translates fully into UK output may overstate impacts, as they do not account for potential leakage. Relatedly, as we do not know the exact timing of exports in the future, we cannot discount or deflate the value of future exports – we assume that they occur within the financial year. Therefore, we use the language “up to” when describing our impacts.

More broadly, estimates of both the domestic and overseas impacts share limitations of the IO methodology:

• There is an implicit assumption that there is always capacity in the economy to meet the additional demand for UK output or developing countries which is not created from displacement of economic activity from elsewhere.
• There is an implicit assumption that production structures are fixed. While the IO methodology takes into account that imports and other inputs are required to produce outputs, these production structures are based on the base or reference year of the underlying IO table – so there are no changes to returns to scale or substitution of imports (for example, if local supply is not sufficient to meet the demand for some input into an export, the business may import more to satisfy its requirements).  Similarly, prices are assumed to be fixed.
• Jobs and GVA intensities estimated by the ONS and the JIM are derived from historical relationships and based on industry averages, which may not be representative for individual UKEF-supported firms (for example, due to differences in labour productivity between exporting and non-exporting firms). They are also based on a static observation of data at the time they were produced – for example, employment intensities could change as a result of exporting, as firms adapt their methods of production to new markets or improve their labour productivity due to knowledge spillovers.

Other caveats to our methodology include:

• Overseas impact estimates rely on finance-to-output relationships (ATRs) derived largely from private sector data, which may not fully capture public sector or non-market activity. Our estimates also depend on international datasets that may be lagged, modelled, or based on regional averages for some countries. Overseas estimates derived from the JIM are therefore subject to greater uncertainty than domestic UK estimates.
• Overseas impact estimates take into account the use of imports when estimating the impacts of new production within a given economy. Therefore, it implicitly captures the “leakage” or double counting of activity generated by UK exports in the economic impacts overseas. In other words, the fact that some UK exports (imports from the perspective of the overseas country) are used in the economic activity overseas is accounted for in the estimate of overseas impacts.
• The jobs figures from both domestic and overseas approaches are not directly comparable. The domestic UK estimates are in Full-Time-Equivalent (FTE) terms, i.e. how much labour input is required in a standardised unit of time whereas the JIM measures the number of people employed. If a project requires 1,000 hours of labour, for example, this could be 5-full time workers (5 FTEs or 5 employees) or alternatively 10 part-time workers (still 5 FTEs but 10 employees). Both approaches provide estimates in ‘job-years’ – the aggregate number of jobs supported over multiple years. For instance, 3 (FTE/headcount) jobs supported could represent either 3 (FTEs/headcounts) employed over a single year, or 1 (FTE/headcount) employed over 3 years. We can only provide this aggregate job-year estimate rather than the estimate of jobs supported per year.

As is inherent in the analysis of any large dataset, given data limitations and numerous assumptions, our results should be treated as indicative rather than precise estimates.

6. Definitions

6.1 Supported

Through this methodology, UKEF is not implying that the jobs or GDP it expects to support are newly created or would not have otherwise happened without UKEF involvement. This is because we do not observe what would have happened were UKEF support unavailable for UK exporters. Therefore, we describe our impacts as supporting (FTE/headcount) jobs and supporting the contribution to GDP.

6.2 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) jobs

For domestic UK impacts, jobs supported are measured in terms of FTEs – which standardises hours worked each week – to account for different working patterns of employees. For example: if the contracted hours for a full-time employee is 40 hours, a part-time employee working 20 hours a week may only count as 0.5 FTE. This means when UKEF says it has supported ‘X’ FTE jobs, these jobs are not equivalent to ‘headcount’ (number of people). Note that FTE jobs are measured in ‘job-years’ as explained above.

6.3 Headcount jobs

For overseas impacts, jobs supported measures the number of individual people employed in a year. The JIM’s employment estimates account for all employed persons, including estimates of people in informal employment. Note that headcount jobs are measured in ‘job-years’ as explained above.

6.4 Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

GDP is a common and widely used metric of the size of an economy. It measures the total value of output produced within the economy. Gross Value Added (GVA) is a primary component of GDP. GVA is equivalent to the value of goods and services produced over a period, minus the cost of all inputs and raw materials used in that production. For example, a baker generates value through producing bread, but requires flour from a miller, who requires wheat from a farmer. Therefore, the value added for the baker is the income generated from selling bread, minus the cost of the flour, whilst the value added for the miller is the income generated through selling flour, minus the cost of the wheat. GVA therefore includes the sum of all incomes generated by UK resident individuals or firms in the production of goods and services. Aggregating this for all industries in the UK and adjusting for net taxes on products equates to GDP [footnote 6]. As explained above, we describe our impact on the economy, measured in GVA terms, as “contribution to GDP”.

6.5 Real versus Nominal

Real values reflect a constant price level, so that changes in prices (inflation) that affect the value is stripped out. This allows for a direct comparison of the values across time, ignoring the effects of price changes. On the other hand, nominal values represent the current price level, so changes in the value will incorporate the effect of inflation [footnote 7].