The stork isn’t carrying the full bag of money any more…any more than the banks are. Private Credit is growing and growing at a pace that both causes concern as we watch these largely unregulated behemoths move through the economy and excites us as they transact with higher risk tolerance and generally more creativity than traditional banks.
This is important ‘cuz small businesses are experiencing significant challenges accessing capital from traditional banks, with approval rates plummeting from 65% in 2022 to approximately 39% in 2025 and small business lending volume down 29% since 2023. This means we have to look at alternative sources and the statistics bear that out: In May 2025 the Federal Reserve estimated U.S. private-credit AUM at ~$1.34T and nearly $2T globally by 2024-Q2—up ~5× since 2009. This course of capital is simply too big to ignore for all business women and men.
My full disclosure is “I’m a leasing guy” – I live in Lease Land and we are funded from a combination of equity we bring to transactions and portfolios and the debt we source from both these same private capital markets and banks. Yes, we look under lots of rocks and so should you.
We encourage all our clients and customers to get to know the capital markets experts – FINRA Members and Specialty Advisors can often point you the way to new sources of funding for your businesses and community. And yes, even us leasing folks have alternatives for you that may be valuable to your overall access to funding and your balance sheet – like 100% Bonus Depreciation for example, that little gem hidden in SEC. 70307. SPECIAL DEPRECIATION ALLOWANCE FOR QUALIFIED PRODUCTION PROPERTY.
So while we can quote Oscar Wilde that it’s best to “…borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back“, go find new sources of money for the important work you’re doing!