Although you may associate it with over-zealous Americans hoarding boxes of vintage 1985 Tupperware in their garage, eBay is actually a huge company (The 4th biggest web-based company in the US, no less), and a really good economic barometer.

In the same way that the Big Mac Index can be used to measure the relative wealth of a country by the price of a juicy McDonalds burger, eBay and it’s web-payments arm PayPal can track a huge amount of transactions and mine a wealth of data from its users.

The eBay Online Business Index does just this – it draws on eBay’s huge reach to poll small businesses that sell on the auction site and can provide some interesting stats.  The latest report has asked small businesses to rate their respective banks willingness to lend them money, and has provided a tidy snapshot of SME lending in the UK.

Of the banks used by the businesses surveyed, Santander came out as most willing to lend money, with only 19% of businesses saying they were unable to access funds.  The other major banks (Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC) were hovering around the mid-30%s, with Natwest proving to be the least giving, with 37% of respondents saying they were denied credit.

The survey also asked businesses if they were forced to use expensive overdraft facilities – again Santander came out top with only 19% of it’s clients relying on an overdraft, however this time HSBC placed last with a rather high 41%.

Another interesting snippet was that although the majority of businesses surveyed would like to see more competition in the banking sector, only 36% of them believe the creation of another major highstreet bank would  help conditions for borrowers.

You can read more analysis at Business Nomad.

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