C-Suite Wednesday – Intuit Predicts Record-Breaking New Business Openings in 2022

December 22, 2021

Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor

C-Suite Wednesday – Intuit Predicts Record-Breaking New Business Openings in 2022

“After two record-breaking years of new business creation, there’s no sign of the trend slowing down as QuickBooks projects as many as 17 million new small businesses could be set up in 2022,” reads an Intuit QuickBooks report with projections for small businesses in 2022. With small business creation expected to increase, the need for small business loans in the new calendar year should also increase.

From a survey with 8,000 U.S. employees, 57% of employees want to start a new business, and one in five plan to open a business in 2022. QuickBooks predicts that over 5.5 million businesses will open next year, and 83% of people wanting to start a business said that COVID accelerated their plans.

In order to fund a new small business, almost half of the future entrepreneurs will apply for a small business loan from a bank or financial institution. New business openings have been breaking records, and this could lead to another record-breaking year for the SBA 504 and 7(a) lending programs.

Fiscal year 2022 is nearly through the first three months. So far, the 504 and 7(a) loan programs are on track to outpace fiscal year 2021. The 7(a) program has already approved more than $3.1 billion in loans which is about half a million less than this time in 2021. The number of 7(a) loans approved this fiscal year is 6,740 loans, about 200 more than this time last year.

The 504 program is still seeing growth in FY22 after running out of funds early in FY21. As of December 10, 2021, almost $2.5 billion in 504 loans have been approved. This is nearly double the dollar amount approved during this time in FY21. There are 2,510 504 loans approved since October 1st, and in FY21, there were 1,636 504 loan approvals at this time. If the 504 program continues at the rate, the funds could be depleted earlier in the fiscal year than they did during FY21.

Sources:
Intuit QuickBooks 2022 Predictions
SBA Lending Report – December 10, 2021