Amidst the chaos of the holiday season, at least one sector of the economy reports an optimistic outlook as another year hurries rapidly to a close.
A survey of small business owners across the country finds that many are anticipating a gangbuster holiday shopping season and a very successful 2016.
The semiannual quizzes small business owners (SBOs) across the country, with 1,000 national respondents and an additional 300 in each of nine smaller submarkets, including Boston. It found that small business optimism is at its highest since the survey’s inception in 2012, with expectations for revenue growth and plans to hire hitting a three-year high. Loan demand and confidence in the economy are on the rise as well.
The survey, Bank of America’s Small Business Owners Report, was conducted by a third-party organization, Braun Research. The responses were anonymous, so it wasn’t possible to determine which, if any, had BofA ties, or even their business sector. But a strong majority indicated optimism for the year ahead in both business and employee growth.
Seventy-eight percent of respondent business owners plan to grow their business in the next five years, and 72 percent believe their revenue will increase in the upcoming year, a 10 percent increase over one year ago. Sixty-seven percent plan to hire more employees in the next 12 months.
Sixty-two percent believe their local economy will improve over the next 12 months, and more than one in three (35 percent) small business owners say they will apply for a loan in 2016, an 11 percent increase over one year ago.
Small businesses – particularly family-owned small businesses – are the backbone of local economies. In a trickle-up economic twist, the better they do, the better big business does, especially the vendors who serve them – including insurance companies and financial institutions.
Increased optimism in the rank-and-file is good news, and equates to opportunity for all local credit unions and banks, but particularly those that are SBA-approved. If your financial institution isn’t, now might be a good time to look into it, before the SBOs come knocking.
It’s not all good news, though; many SBOs are concerned about the possibility of a cyberattack on themselves or their bank. Fifty-nine percent expressed concern over their customers’ data, and 66 percent report they have taken measures to be prepared for a cyberattack. Perhaps most alarmingly, 12 percent report that they have already been the victim of a cybersecurity breach.
Here again is an opportunity for banks and credit unions. While they may not be able to prevent a cyberattack on their small-business clients, they can certainly reassure those clients that they are doing all they can to protect their clients’ investments. Moreover, FIs should be actively communicating to clients that in the event of a cyberattack – because such events are looking more and more inevitable – clients will be made whole and their accounts carefully monitored for future suspicious activity.
As the holiday season draws to a close and another year dawns, we look forward to economic prosperity – and should aim to do all we can to ensure its continued growth and success.
