On October 8, 2024, the Federal Reserve System released its 2024 Small Business Credit Survey. The Board invites businesses with fewer than 500 employees (their idea of small businesses) to answer a series of questions aimed at obtaining data on how your business fared in terms of access to credit in the past year.

The survey is entirely voluntary.

If you have had issues with access to credit, such as losing one or more lines of credit from a bank or a bank or payment processor deciding not to process credit-card or debit-card payments for your business, you can give some particulars about the issue to the Board of Governors via this survey.

If you know another pawnbroker who has had trouble finding credit through a bank, whether a national bank or a state-chartered bank, or through a payment processor or fintech company, you might suggest that this pawnbroker look at the survey.

The survey is online. It takes about 12 minutes to complete the survey. Small businesses have until November 1 to complete the survey. Survey responses will be reviewed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the home of a project known as Fed Communities. The Cleveland Bank’s email is fedcommunities@clev.frb.org.

Unlike many federal government data collection efforts, we repeat that this survey is voluntary. No one is required to respond – and you can work your way through the survey and decide not to submit it.

Your responses may help the Federal Reserve System understand issues with lack of access to credit across the pawn industry.

The NPA neither encourages nor discourages pawnbroker members from participating in this survey. Participation is entirely your decision.

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