The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today announced the launch of a survey of banks regarding their small business lending practices. The web-based survey of roughly 2,000 randomly selected FDIC-insured banks will begin in late June and will be administered by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of the FDIC.
The Small Business Lending Survey (SBLS) will collect data that provide additional insight into many aspects of small business lending, including nationally representative information on the general characteristics of banks’ small business borrowers, the types of credit offered to small businesses, and the relative importance of commercial lending for banks of different sizes and business models. It will also look at data for banks in urban and rural communities. The survey will provide new information on banks’ market areas for small business lending and their perceived competition.
The survey also includes some questions related to consumer transaction accounts that are responsive to a Congressional mandate to learn more about bank efforts to bring unbanked individuals into the conventional finance system.
Institutions chosen to participate in the SBLS will be contacted by letter at the end of June with directions on how to proceed.
More information may be found on the FDIC’s small business lending page: https://www.fdic.gov/smallbusiness/. Results of the study are expected to be reported by the FDIC in late 2017.
For additional information or questions, survey participants can use the secure messaging center found on the SBLS Help Site (https://econhelp.census.gov/sbls). For additional assistance not accessible through the secure messaging center, survey participants can reach the FDIC at SBLS@fdic.gov.