Trends in Small Business Lending

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October 03, 2012

Trends in Small Business Lending

The Atlanta Fed's latest semiannual Small Business Survey is active through October 22, 2012. If you own a small business and would like to participate, send an e-mail to SmallBusinessResearch@atl.frb.org.

In our previous survey conducted in April 2012, we found that firms applying for credit at large national banks had notably less success than firms that applied to small banks.

We also found that the firms applying to large banks tended to be much younger than the firms that applied to small banks. We speculated that this "age factor" could be contributing to the lower overall success rates at large banks.

A difference between small businesses' success at large and small banks has also been documented by the online credit facilitator Biz2Credit. Biz2Credit works a bit like an online dating service'after answering a series of questions (and providing the typical financial documents required by lenders), small businesses are presented with five potential "matches." To determine the best five matches, Biz2Credit identifies what lenders are looking for'usually a certain credit score, a minimum number of years in business, an established banking relationship, and targeted industries.

The resulting credit applications are the basis for the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index. Biz2Credit also reports approval rates from the matching process for large banks, small banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders. These approval rates are plotted on the chart below.

Much like we saw in the Small Business Survey, Biz2Credit reports that small firms have had consistently less success in obtaining credit at large banks.
Confirming our results encourages us that our April observation was a good one. But confirmation isn't explanation'what accounts for the different experiences small businesses have in securing credit from small banks versus big banks? And so, we dig deeper.

Note: According to Biz2Credit, its index is based on 1,000 of the 10,000-plus applications submitted each month. To be included, the business has to have at least a 680 credit score, be at least two years old, and have an established relationship with the bank to which it is applying. Selection methods are also applied to provide for national representation.

By Ellyn Terry, senior economic research analyst at the Atlanta Fed

October 3, 2012 in Banking, Small Business | Permalink

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