Listening to pundits and politicians, you’d think banks were intentionally hurting small businesses and the economy. When a Senator or “Talking Head” says, “This economy needs banks to start lending to small businesses again,” you might think they know what they’re talking about. They don’t.
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index is the gold standard of small business surveys. If you track the monthly results of Dr. Bill Dunkelberg’s work on his Index, as I have on my radio program for more than a decade, you will see that throughout the entire period since the Great Recession began in 2008, more than 90% of small business owners have consistently reported that their “credit needs are being met.”
It’s true that the big banks curtailed lending while getting their own balance sheets under control. But out here on Main Street USA, if your small business qualifies for credit and wants it, you can get it from either an independent community bank or credit union, if not from one of the national banks. The problem is not credit availability; it’s demand. Like everybody else on Planet Earth, small businesses are deleveraging.
We wanted to know a bit more about the banking relationships of small business owners, so recently, on our website and weekly e-newsletter, we asked this question: “What type of bank do you do business with?” Here’s what we learned:
Our respondents who do business with a “large regional or national bank,” were barely more than those who said they trade with a “local community bank,” coming in at 38% and 36%, respectively. The third option of our poll, “a local credit union” – which are increasingly proving their relevance to small businesses – was chosen by 15% of our sample. And finally, a little more than one-in-ten said they needed a bank.
A week later, in a companion poll, we asked our small business audience: “Are you happy with your current banking relationship?” Seven out of ten said yes and 17% said no. And the group who said they “would change banks if they could,” came in at 13%.
The results of our unscientific online polls are backed up by the findings of several highly regarded surveys, like Dunkelberg’s NFIB Index: Main Street small businesses are dealing with many challenges in this not-so-great recovery, but access to credit is not one of them.
Uncertainty is suppressing small business loan demand, not banks.
I talked more about banking relationships recently on The Small Business Advocate Show. Click here to listen or download my conversation on how happy small businesses are with their banks.
