According to data from 2017, around 40% of all small businesses in the US today are women-owned, translating into roughly 11.6 million women-owned businesses, generating over $1.7 trillion in combined revenue.
Yet, despite this positive trend, it can still be quite difficult for women to obtain small business funding and financing compared to their male counterparts. There are a variety of reasons for this sad reality.
But, fortunately, there are also alternative funding sources that make it easier than ever to obtain small business loans for women, women entrepreneur’s loans, and otherwise access the funding they need to grow their businesses and succeed.
Why Women-Owned Businesses Face Financing Hurdles
Historically, a lot of the source of disparities in access to small business funding stemmed from prejudice and sexism. While much of that has been eradicated, some vestiges still remain, especially among old-school, boys’ club banks and financial institutions.
Statistically speaking, women make less money than men for the same job, have lower credit scores on average, and are otherwise discriminated against financially solely on the basis of gender.
Many alternative financing companies have recognized these problems with traditional lending, and taken great strides to ensure that loans for women-owned businesses are easier to obtain.
Small business loans for women, like all forms of small business loans, can make or break a small business.
The special attention and emphasis on women’s entrepreneur loans helps to level the playing field in the business world, ensuring that the best-run businesses with the best ideas, products, and services rise to the top, and aren’t artificially held back by societal prejudices.
Alternative Lending Sources for Women Entrepreneurs’ Loans
There are now several alternative sources of small business funding, both for small businesses in general and women-owned businesses in specific.
Some examples of these alternative lending sources include:
- Venture capital firms, which evaluate new businesses and ideas, and invest, usually for a stake of ownership in the company.
- Crowdfunding, either directly or utilizing business crowdfunding platforms, allow small donations to add up to meaningful working capital or seed money for businesses.
- Peer-to-peer loans, essentially a system that uses an online platform to link borrowers with investors.
- Alternative non-bank lenders, like BizFly Funding, that can offer all manner of small business funding options, without the risk-aversion and low rates of approval that traditional financial institutions and banks maintain.
In the case of the last example, there are numerous alternative non-bank lenders around today. They’ve really developed a lot over the last decade, chiefly as a response to the global financial crisis of the late 2000s.
Because commercial banks have strict regulations and risk-averse lending policies, many businesses found that it was near impossible to access small business funding. This only made the existing disparities with regard to small business loans for women even more severe.
Private, non-bank lenders can offer funding to a wider selection of people and businesses. The level of risk they choose to take, and the qualification or eligibility requirements for loans and other products they offer, is entirely up to them.
This means that even business loans for women with bad credit can be offered at fairly competitive interest rates from non-bank alternative lenders, such as BizFly Funding.
Typical Uses of Small Business Loans for Women
Some of the most common uses for women’s entrepreneur loans or small business loans for women are highlighted below.
It’s important to remember that there are many different kinds of these loans and credit products, and the duration, interest rates, eligibility requirements, and other aspects of the loan may dictate which use(s) they are best suited for.
For example, short-term small business loans for women are more suited to short-term projects and investments with a rapid return on investment, since repayment starts almost immediately.
Longer term loans better pair with working capital needs and longer-term projects and investments.
- Hiring additional staff, training staff, offering benefits or competitive salaries to grow your business
- Buying new equipment, repairing or replacing existing equipment
- Expanding office space, plant/production space, warehouse space, and similar
- Executing marketing plans or promotional campaigns
- Purchasing inventory, especially for cyclical or seasonal businesses
- Purchase order financing
- Growing your business with new locations, offices, stores, employees, and other needs
- Buying out partners or part owners of the business
- Debt consolidation
- Credit score improvement
Small Business Loans for Women from BizFly Funding
BizFly Funding is a US-based non-bank alternative lender, that specializes exclusively in small business funding.
We offer a full range of small business funding products, including lines of credit, small business loans, debt consolidation loans, merchant cash advances, bad credit loans, and small business loans for women.
The application process is free and fast, conducted online, after which one of the BizFly Funding customer service team will be in touch to work out details. Funding is often available within 1 business day following approval.
At BizFly Funding, we’re proud to offer loans for women-owned businesses, and have gone to great lengths to ensure our eligibility criteria increase access to capital for women entrepreneurs.
While every business is different, and every loan is different, our general criteria of eligibility, terms, loan durations, etc. for small business loans for women are:
- Estimated loan terms of 2 to 36 months.
- Your business must have been in operation for at least 2 months as of the time of application.
- Your business credit score must be 500 or higher.
- Your business must generate at least $8,000 in monthly revenue, with higher requirements for larger small business loan amounts.
- Interest rates are charged based on a number of factors, and range from 12% to 45% depending on the duration of funding, credit score, loan amount, etc.
- Small business loans for women-owned businesses have a minimum borrowing amount of $10,000, up to a maximum borrowing amount of $1,000,000.
If you own, operate, or work for a women-owned small business, and are in need of funding or financing for your business activities, consider BizFly Funding.
