Kensington's latest Self-Employed Index has found that even though only 42 per cent of business owners expect to see an increase in turnover over the next 12 months, down from 48 per cent in May, two-thirds say they are “very confident” or “quite confident” about their business prospects for the next six months – a figure that is up from the first two quarters of the year.
With the latest statistics from Datamonitor estimating the UK’s self-employed population to account for more than 3.6 million people, this means more than 2.4 million business owners continue to be confident about their financial prospects amidst an environment of global economic uncertainty.
Business owners aged between 35 and 44 are the most bullish - nearly three-quarters expressed confidence about their prospects.
A third of business owners who are married or living as married claimed to be “very confident” about their prospects, compared to 22 per cent of the single self-employed.
Yet, despite the prevailing mood of confidence, the current economic environment has impacted on the way in which the self-employed run their business and lower expectations for turnover have had a knock-on effect on recruitment plans.
The Index has found that more than six in ten business owners say they definitely have no plans to recruit more staff in the next 12 months, a rise of 6 per cent on last quarter.
And within this group, it is the female section of the self-employed population who are by far the more conservative, with 67 per cent of female business owners saying they definitely have no plans to recruit more staff, compared to just 58 per cent of males.
The research for this quarter’s Index was carried out by talking to more than 500 self-employed people. It found that 69 per cent of the self-employed population is male and the most popular age group for people to be self-employed is between 35 and 54. Two thirds of business owners are in the ABC1 social grade (66 per cent), and 70 per cent are either married or living as married.
Ian Giles, director of marketing at Kensington Mortgages, said: “Of course, the challenges faced by the mortgage market are well documented but the Kensington Self-Employed Index shows that business owners are reacting pragmatically to the current economic environment by reassessing expectations for turnover and recruitment.
"But when circumstances change, successful businesses are able to react to those circumstances and come back stronger than ever before, so it’s not surprising that so many self-employed people remain confident about their business prospects for the future.
“A strong self-employed sector is good news for the country and great news for mortgage intermediaries, as these individuals will often have specialist circumstances and require sound financial advice to help match them with the right product from the right lender and ensure they can be as confident in their mortgage as they are in their business.”
