Archive:Access to finance statistics
- Data from Month Year, most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.
Affordable and appropriate access to finance is an important issue not only for new starting and growing companies and for existing ones, expanding their operations. It is significant for all businesses, gaining productivity, innovation, creating employment and wealth for the wider national and international benefits. The topic of Access to finance is crucial for all business development and especially for small and medium-size firms, due to their largest share in terms of number of enterprises, turnover and employment in the business economy. In the resent year there was some evidence that because of the nature of the assets of these companies, lenders underlay efforts to assess their value, and are less likely to offer finance.
To shed light on these issues Eurostat, in consultation with its users for business statistics, the OECD, EIF and the ECB, has organized a business survey to obtain information on the access to finance of medium-sized enterprises (10 to 250 employees). The results have been published on Eurostat's website and reveal extraordinary changes in financing success rates between the two reference years.
The survey was conducted with 25,000 respondent firms in 20 Member States and serves to respond to the finance types and sources sought before and (arguably) after the crisis, on their success rates, the need for guarantees, on the choice of lending institutions, and on the future needs for finance, as well as the economic outlook in the view of businesses in Europe.
Main statistical findings
The survey results highlight the challenges during from the financial and economic crisis according to the finance need and difficulty in obtaining funds for small businesses. It may provide also ideas for decision-making bodies on further process of improving or developing more innovative and flexible ways of providing finance services for small firms. The information also could be used for determining the financing obstacles to assess, in particular, financial constraints or investigate the presence of financing gaps for small high growth company. Annualizing the data may serves for improving the financial environment for small and medium size of businesses and especially to help innovation and growth in different economic sectors.
The main findings are:
- Seeking finance - more than 80 % of companies did not seek any finance type during the crises and indicated significant increase of finance need in the first three years after overcoming the financial crisis.
- Finance types sought - over the period from 2007 to 2013 the loans remain the most desired finance type.
- Success rate in obtaining finance – the end as compared with the beginning of the financial crises, success rate looked bad;
- Reason for partially successful or unsuccessful in obtaining loan finance - according to the bank's opinion the business had lack of own capital and in the opinion of the business – too high Interest rates.
- Reason for choosing a particular bank for a loan - 'Business is already a client' was the main reported reason.
- Guarantees need and guarantor types in obtaining loan finance – there was a tendency of no need of a guarantee in obtaining loan finance.
- Perception of the changes between 2007 and 2010 – on average, 38% of all surveyed companies considered the financial situation of the business as unchanged during the financial crisis.
- Envisage finance sources between 2011 and 2013 - the most envisage finance source remains banks.
- The most important factors limiting business growth between 2011 and 2013 – despite of optimistic future picture on access to finance, companies cited the general economic outlook of the economy as the possible factor limiting business growth.
Data sources and availability
Data on Access to finance survey were collected through interviewing a representative sample of enterprises by the National Statistical Institutes (NSI) in 20 EU Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).
The statistical survey was carried out per a common questionnaire used by all participating countries. Many countries introduced additional questions and/or made some changes to the existing questions, without deviating from the substance of the issues.
The scope of the data collection shall be enterprises in the non-financial business economy that fits all of the following characteristics:
- Classified to NACE Rev 2 codes B to N, but not to code K (financial services);
- Independent, that is not a subsidiary of another business, either in the same member state or foreign;
- Has existed at least since 2005;
- Had between 10 and 249 persons employed in 2005;
- Active in 2008;
- Has at least 10 persons employed at the reference period.
Context
Access to finance is crucial to business success and an important factor for economic growth in Europe following the economic crisis in 2007. The purpose of this survey is to examine where there may be constraints on the availability of finance, and how those may be changing; the need for finance (loans, equity and other) in the future, for example to promote growth, and the sources from which businesses would wish to obtain this finance.
Data are collected under Regulation 97/2009 of 2 February 2009. Regulation 295/2008 made provision for a flexible module “for the conduct of a specific and limited ad hoc data collection of enterprise characteristics”.
Further Eurostat information
Publications
Press release.
Main tables
- Title(s) of second level folder (if any)
- Title(s) of third level folder (if any)
Database
- Title(s) of second level folder (if any)
- Title(s) of third level folder (if any)
Dedicated section
- Special SBS topics
- Access to finance
Methodology / Metadata
- Name of the destination ESMS metadata file (ESMS metadata file - ESMS code, e.g. bop_fats_esms)
Source data for tables, figures and maps on this page (MS Excel)
Other information
Questionnaire;
Methodology