Microenterprises and significant risk factors in loan process

Abstract

Microenterprises – small companies with their own characteristic features – are a major component of the economic system, which brings positive effects on employment, increases the supply of goods and services, promotes the growth of competition in the market and performs other important functions in the economic system. Microenterprises face sufficient problems with the access to bank financing, which is a base for their sustainable growth. The aim of this paper was to define and quantify significant risk factors of microenterprises’ credit financing in the current dynamic economic environment and to compare the significant position of these undertakings in relation to commercial banks by gender, education of the entrepreneur and the company’s age. Our research confirmed the impact of the age of the company in the perception of the growing important of the credit risk during the crisis, and the level education of the entrepreneur in relation to the familiarity with the conditions under which the banks provide loans. All other monitored factors do not have any statistically significant impact on the monitored risk factors in the loan process. Our results show that the main problems of the micro enterprises are an absolute unfamiliarity with the credit conditions of the commercial banks across the entire spectrum of the researched groups, and their persuasion of the lending criteria to be non-transparent. © 2016, Centre of Sociological Research. All rights reserved.