5.2 Access to Finance
Observations
Of SME employers, 63% were using some form of external finance at the time of the 2018 interview. Around 62% of micros used finance, compared with 70% of small businesses and 76% of medium-sized businesses. The overall proportion using finance was six percentage points lower than in 2017. The most common forms of external finance used were credit cards (32%), bank overdrafts (29%) and leasing and hire purchase (20%).
Indicator 5.2.1 – Ease of getting credit
The 'getting credit' score measures the gap between an economy’s performance and the regulatory best practice on the Getting Credit indicator components; strength of legal rights index and depth of credit information index. The score ranges from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the worst regulatory performance and 100 the best regulatory performance.
Metric 5.2.1a — International comparisons of ease of getting credit scores, G7 countries, 2005–2020
Source: Doing business
Indicator 5.2.2 – Type of financing for SMEs
The statistics are based on a 2018 telephone survey of UK SMEs. Micro businesses are those with 1-9 employees, and small businesses have 10-49 employees. Metric 5.2.2a shows the % of firms using each method of financing.
Metric 5.2.2a — Types of finance currently being used, UK, 2018
Source: BEIS