Best Business Financing Options Today

Harvard Business Review just came out with a new study on the state of small business lending in the USA. It is a 142 page document which can be found at the bottom of this article if you want to read the whole thing.

What I found interesting about the study:

The politicians had their heyday with the financial crash decreasing the number of banks from 8,500 at the end of 2007 to 5,900 at the end of 2016
They did a study from 1990 to March 2017 on the level of difficulty of small business getting funding, currently at 3% (March 2017) from a high of 16% in 2010
The growth of the new online lenders and their nose bleed pricing.
The satisfaction level with different types of lenders: large banks, online lenders, CDFI, Credit Unions and Small Banks.

The following is a series of graphs representing the satisfaction levels for each of the lenders based on if the borrowers were 1) satisfied, 2) neutral –had no comment either way or 3) dissatisfied.