De Nederlandsche Bank publishes first SME lending breakdown showing nearly half of Dutch corporate bank loans go to SMEs at higher average rates

De Nederlandsche Bank has published new statistics on bank lending to non-financial companies in the Netherlands, including a first breakdown showing that small and medium-sized enterprises account for just under half of the EUR 340 billion outstanding to the Dutch corporate sector as of March 2026. That share has been stable for some time. Small and medium-sized enterprises also pay slightly higher interest rates on average, at about 3.6 percent on outstanding credit versus about 3.1 percent for non-SME companies. Bank lending is concentrated in a small number of sectors, led by real estate at EUR 149 billion, mainly housing corporations, followed by wholesale and retail trade at EUR 37 billion, professional services at EUR 32 billion, largely head offices with administrative or intra-group funding functions, and agriculture at EUR 21 billion. Average interest rates paid by businesses have been broadly stable at 3.4 percent over the past 12 months, but vary by sector, with lower rates for real estate and entities that may have government links such as water and waste companies, and higher rates for more cyclical sectors including hospitality, arts, sports and recreation. DNB has also revised its sectoral lending table to publish monthly rather than quarterly data, using combined existing sources from DNB and Statistics Netherlands, aligning the series with Eurostat’s new industry classification, improving representativeness and reducing banks’ reporting burden by removing the previous quarterly reporting.