Decline of Rural Lending Crimps Small-Town Business
< < Go Back
Banks are closing branches and paring credit in rural America, focusing instead on booming urban markets; it’s ‘like a death sentence’.
Danielle Baker wanted a $324,000 loan last year to expand the peanut-processing business she ran from the family farm. She had a longstanding relationship with the Roxobel branch of Southern Bank, and she thought Southern would help fund the peanut operation she had spun off, too.
But that branch—the town’s only bank—closed in 2014. A Southern banker based in Ahoskie, 19 miles away, said Bakers’ Southern Traditions Peanuts Inc. was too small and specialized, she says. A PNC bank branch also turned her down.
“If you are not a big company with tons of assets and a big bank account,” Ms. Baker says, “they just overlook you.”
More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):
Rss Feed