Veteran-owned small businesses face more challenges
With SBA-guaranteed loans, civilian-owned businesses have gotten approvals at a greater rate than veteran-owned ones.
Financing can be a tall order for veteran-owned small businesses — taller than for their civilian counterparts.
So says the report “Financing their Future: Veteran Entrepreneurs and Capital Access,” from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Small Business Administration.
According to the report, even though the demand for financing for such businesses is comparable to that from civilian-owned businesses, veteran-owned small business applicants were more likely than non-veteran-owned small business applicants to encounter “financing shortfalls,” wherein the funds they received weren’t as much as they’d asked for.
In addition, veteran-owned businesses have lower rates of approval from popular lenders. And when it comes to SBA-guaranteed loans, civilian-owned businesses have gotten approvals at a greater rate than veteran-owned businesses.
Reasons cited in the report for such unequal treatment of veteran-owned businesses include the possibility that veteran-owned businesses are looking for smaller loan amounts, but have a higher credit risk and not as much information is available.
In fact, the rate of veteran entrepreneurship is actually declining, according to the report, despite the skills veterans bring to the table in business: “teamwork, leadership and management skills, work ethic/self-discipline, perseverance, and crisis management.”
And that’s definitely not a good thing, with the report pointing out that “[a] study conducted by the SBA’s Office of Advocacy in 2011 found that ‘military service is highly correlated with self-employment probability,’ and that ‘veterans are at least 45 percent more likely than those with no active-duty military experience to be self-employed.’ This economic engine for the U.S. cannot be overstated; in 2012, there were 2.5 million veteran-owned businesses generating $1.1 trillion in sales and $195 billion in annual payroll.”
But the trend among veterans starting businesses was already heading down at the time, and in interviews with veteran entrepreneurs, the report says, “75 percent of the veteran entrepreneur respondents reported encountering challenges as they were starting and growing their business. One of the most common reasons cited was social capital. Social capital in the form of networks and mentorships can be vital for entrepreneurial success; ‘whether that means gaining investors, recruiting experts, or building your team.’”
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