Emily Maltby wrote a great piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning (http://on.wsj.com/iO6xb2) showing how crappy Small Business lending is today. There are some really powerful stats that show just how hard it is for small businesses to get money and how the big banks aren’t doing anything to help the problem:
- Total small business loans outstanding are now $609B, down 8.6% (Mar. 2011 v. Mar. 2010) Read: “Small businesses aren’t getting new loans after old loans are paid down”
- Big banks' outstanding loans to small businesses fell by 14% between March 2010 and March 2011. Read: “Big banks not lending to small businesses is the main cause of the problem”
- Business owners rank access to capital as the most important issue facing privately held companies. Read: “Small businesses NEED money”
- In the past six months, only 17% of loan-seeking businesses with less than $5 million in annual revenue landed bank financing. Read: “The fall in small business lending is due to banks not lending, there are plenty of companies out there looking for money that aren’t getting it”
Whenever I read stats like this it gets me fired up about the work RevenueLoan is doing to solve this problem. Stay tuned.
(Thanks for sending me the article, Rob)
