BMO Getting More Serious About Business Financing

A market wire news release came out this week about BMO’s 2010 business financing lending.

Here is an excerpt from the article…

BMO Study Finds 80 per cent of Small Business Owners in Ontario Consider Access to Credit as an Important Determinant Choosing Their Bank

BMO to Add 150 New Small Business Banking Experts Across Canada in 2011.

….

Here’s a link to the full article …http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/BMO-Small-Business-Lending-in-Ontario-Reached-More-Than-11-Billion-in-2010-TSX-BMO-1423285.htm

The first point is more than a bit obvious. I don’t need a survey to tell me that at least 80% of small business owners may want access to credit at some point from their bank.

The second point is more interesting and telling.

During the recession, the major banks and other institutional lenders were laying people off and coming up with new and creative ways to decline requests for business financing.

Now BMO is telling us about all the money they lent out last year, survey results that speak to businesses looking for capital, and an announcement that they are going to hire a bunch of new people to work on business financing requests.

I’d say this is definitely a strong signal that the business lending market is getting back to what we may consider more normal operations in the Canadian market.

That being said, I still believe that the major lenders’ credit policies are going to still be tighter than they were a couple of years ago, but at least they are actually getting back to lending money.

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