When local entrepreneur Troy Parker was seeking a loan for his small business, he came up against a problem that prevented him from securing a line of credit from a mainstream banking system.
Troy is not alone in his struggle to get credit. According to the Federal Reserve’s 2021 Small Business Credit Survey 30% of Black small business owners say access to credit is their main financial challenge. That’s compared to just 12% of white business owners who cited credit access as a concern.
The state of Ohio has a program designed to help small and minority-owned business owners get the loans they need to grow or expand their businesses and it helped Troy out. The Ohio Department of Development’s Collateral Enhancement Programprovides 50% of the cash collateral for loans to Minority-owned Businesses (MBE) and Women-owned Businesses (WBE).
Joining Cincinnati Edition to discuss the program and some of the challenges Black business owners face are First Financial Bank Senior Vice President and SBA Sales Manager Angelica Johnson; and Innovative Labor and Cleaning Services, Inc., President and CEO Troy Parker.
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