When Covid first began to rip through the economy in 2020, lesser known loan shops took centre stage and dished out bumper cash to small businesses. Splashy lending became something of a cause for the nation to throw their weight behind.
London-based small business banking firm Tide, then three years old, was among the lenders to rush to sign up to the temporary taxpayer-backed bounce-back loan scheme. Now, looking at another recession, soaring energy costs, and darkening economic skies, chief Oliver Prill wonders whether crisis has become the norm for small business owners.
“We’ve not seen radical change in the last 12 months. Clearly, there’s pressure [for small businesses]. “However, before that there was pressure from Covid. Sometimes it’s sort of the question to say ‘what is actually the norm?’”
While three years of “permanent crisis” is yet to rear its head in a wave of defaults, he says, the prevailing mood among Tide’s small business ‘members’ is not a positive one.
“There is of course a lot of exhaustion right now in the small business community, and we’re definitely picking that up,” he says.
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