The enthusiasm for small business could not have been clearer when Lloyds invited dozens of company bosses to its Backing Your Ambition event in Kent.

The bank, which held the gathering to celebrate reaching its 250th year this month, has a strategy to increase lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by 5% per year.

This figure is ahead of the national average and would up net lending by £1.1 billion every 12 months.

The bank prides itself on its record of approving 80% of loan and overdraft applications and has given relationship managers £500,000 of local lending discretion.

“We have big ambitions to grow our market share of SME market by 1% each year,” enthused Lloyds area director Ian Patterson, who covers Kent.

But why the fascination with small companies?

“Most of the growth in the UK economy is coming from SMEs,” said Tim Rush, managing director of KPMG Enterprise for Kent.

“If you look at how quickly companies grow now it is phenomenal. Fintech, healthcare and lots of other sectors are growing rapidly.

“In the past big companies just bought the small ones but now we are seeing more partnering. Big business is thinking ‘if we bring them in house we risk crushing their entrepreneurial skill’. The dynamic has changed and small companies are no longer swallowed up.”

The economic case for backing small business is staggering.

“Something like 50% of the Fortune 500 companies in five years time don’t exist today,” said David Bywater, partner at KPMG, who lives in Folkestone.

“A lot of start-ups in the next few years will be Fortune 500 companies. We need to adapt to that change in the market place. Business changes so quickly these days...” - David Bywater, KPMG

“A lot of start-ups in the next few years will be Fortune 500 companies. We need to adapt to that change in the market place. Business changes so quickly these days.”

The change in tack from the big institutions bodes well for Kent, which has 59,440 small businesses, representing 99.9% of the economy, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.

Its 6,000 members alone employ 23,000 people and have contributed to the vast fall in unemployment across the county over the last year, with 7,309 fewer people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.

This month it said nearly a third of businesses planned to increase capital investment over the next year.

The big growth area for small businesses is expected to be exports, according to Lloyds economist Rhys Herbert, who spoke at the Lloyds 250 event at Turkey Mill in Maidstone.

This year the world economy is expected to see the best growth since the recession, with next year to be even better. That will throw up more opportunities for small firms to sell abroad as the UK continues to recover.

According to UKTI, 83% of exporters achieve growth not otherwise possible if they remained in the domestic market.

Mr Herbert believes the UK economy grew by 3% last year and will do about the same again over the next two years.

He said: “We expect global GDP to grow by 75% in the next 30 years and we expect the export market to grow more quickly.

“That is why exports present a key opportunity. The emerging market will take an increasing share of the global economy.

“That is where most opportunities will be. As the economies get richer, demand for goods and services will increase, which is an opportunity for the UK.”