Kansas City Fed Launches National Small Business Lending Survey
In July 2017, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System approved a new voluntary survey of U.S. commercial banks on their small business lending activities. The survey is being managed and administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. This report summarizes the results from the first survey period, which covers lending activity in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The Small Business Lending Survey is a quarterly collection of quantitative and qualitative information that will be used to understand credit market conditions for bank lending to small businesses. The survey captures detailed, comprehensive information that is not otherwise available about small business lending and how it changes from quarter to quarter. Specifically, quantitative information is collected on commercial and industrial (C&I) loan amounts, interest rates, maturities, and lending terms for term loans and lines of credit with fixed and variable interest rates, and applications received and approved. In addition, qualitative information is collected on changes in credit standards and terms and loan demand, as well as reasons for those changes.
In addition to collecting this new information, the survey is an improvement over other small business lending data collections that use loan size to define a small business loan, such as the Call Report. In this survey, a small business loan is defined as a loan made to a firm with $5 million or less in annual gross revenue.
Click here to read the summary survey results.