Revised City of South Bend Disparity Study Report

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City of South Bend Disoarity Study 2020 Of debt held, women were more likely than their male peers to hold unsecured debt for their businesses. Regardless of revenue size, women -owned firms were less likely than their male counterparts to use business assets as collateral, compared to similarly -sized, men - owned firms (40 percent compared to 51 percent of men -owned firms). Demands for Financing Forty-three percent of women -owned firms applied for financing. Simi- lar to men -owned firms, women -owned firms most frequently applied for loans and lines of credit. Both women- and men -owned firms were most successful at small banks. Both reported that the most common reason for financing was business expansion. Women -owned appli- cants tended to seek smaller amounts of financing even when their rev- enue size was comparable. Overall, women -owned firms were less likely to receive all of the financ- ing applied for compared to men -owned firms. Women -owned firms received a higher approval rate for U.S. Small Business Administration loans compared to men -owned firms. Women -owned firms with lower credit were less likely to be approved for business loans than their male counterparts with similar credit (68 percent compared to 78 percent). Firms That Did Not Apply for Financing Women -owned firms reported being discouraged from applying for financing for fear of being turned down at a greater rate: 22 percent compared to 15 percent. Women -owned firms cited low credits scores more frequently than men -owned firms as their chief obstacle in secur- ing credit. By contrast, men -owned businesses were more likely to cite performance issues. Lender Satisfaction Women -owned firms were most consistently dissatisfied by lenders' lack of transparency and by long waits for credit decisions. However, they were notably more satisfied with their borrowing experiences at small banks rather than large ones. b. 2018 Small Business Credit Survey The 2018 Small Business Credit Survey focused on minority-owned firms. Queries were submitted to businesses with fewer than 500 employees in the third and fourth quarters of 2018 and generated 6,614 responses from employer firms relative to information on the race or ethnicity of a firm's ownership. Data were weighted by the race or ethnicity of firm ownership, 88 0 2020 Colette Holt & Associates, All Rights Reserved.