The U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy recently released its “Small Business Lending in the United States, 2020” report, which shows that small business loans (those below $1 million) increased by nearly 40 percent from 2019 to 2020, largely due to the Paycheck Protection Program. The report, utilizing FDIC data, analyzes loan data from June 2019 to June 2020, and examines the small-business lending market at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The data shows the increase was among the largest banks, and smaller banks actually experienced a decline in the overall value of small-business loans from June 2019 to June 2020. Lenders with total assets between $1 billion and $10 billion realized the largest percentage change in the value of small-business loans outstanding of 65.8 percent, while the smallest depository lenders, with assets of less than $100 million, realized the largest percentage decline in the value (13.4 percent) of loans outstanding.
