Banking Experiences Of Canadian Micro-Businesses

Defined as those firms with three or fewer full time employees and annual sales of less than $200,000, many micro-enterprises may find it more difficult than larger firms to obtain the debt capital necessary for both expansion and on-going operations. This is because micro-enterprises are often perceived as risky and because banks are not in the venture capital business. Moreover, banking institutions benefit more from the economies of scale inherent in making larger loans. It follows that the terms onwhich lending is extended to small enterprises may be more onerous than the termsextended to larger firms. To the extent that micro-enterprise is dominated by women-owned businesses, the potential scarcity of debt capital could also be experienced as a gender issue. This argumentation motivates the empirical analyses reported in this paper. These arguments lead to two testable hypotheses that this research probes empirically. The first hypothesis is that access to and terms of credit for micro-enterprises are more severe than they are for larger firms. The second hypothesis is that within the micro-enterprise sector access to, and terms of, credit for women owners are, ceteris paribus, more demanding. A taxonomy of the very small business sector is advanced. It is found that size indeed counts against microbusinesses in their banking relationships, but that gender is not a factor. The paper closes by suggesting the development of new technologies to improve the lending efficiencies of micro-loan transactions and the establishment of new lending vehicles. Such changes might be profitable for banks, useful for very small firms, and helpful to community economic development agencies. The high incidence of dissatisfied small business customers suggests the need for a less concentrated small business banking market. To this end, the recommendations of other researchers are endorsed, recommendations for legislative changes that would permit the entry into the lending market of small cooperative banking institutions (such as credit unions and caisses populaires in Canada).