How we rank SBA lenders

What data do you use?

The U.S. Small Business Administration publishes a loan-level record of every 7(a) and 504 loan it guarantees, released under the Freedom of Information Act. Each record includes the lender, the borrower's industry (NAICS code), the state, the loan amount and program, the approval date, and whether the business was new or changing ownership. We use the most recent several fiscal years and refresh quarterly.

• Cancelled loans are left out, so the data reflects loans lenders actually committed to.
• We never import borrowers' names or addresses. Only the lending activity matters.

Lender statistics come from the U.S. Small Business Administration's public 7(a) and 504 loan data, released under the Freedom of Information Act. How we rank lenders.

How do you match my industry?

Every SBA loan is tagged with a six-digit NAICS industry code. We start with your exact industry. If too few SBA loans have been made in it, we widen to closely related industries, so your matches always rest on enough real loans.

Definition

NAICS code: The North American Industry Classification System code that identifies a business's industry. 621210, for example, is Offices of Dentists.

What does your ranking consider?

Each lender that actively makes SBA loans like yours is scored on its real lending record, including:

• Experience in your industry: how many loans, and how many dollars, it has made to businesses like yours.
• Activity in your state: how much it lends in your state for the kind of loan you need.
• Loan size fit: how often its loans are close to the amount you're asking for.
• Recent activity: whether it's lending in your industry now, not just years ago.
• Your type of loan: for example, business purchases, startups, real estate or franchises.

How much each factor counts, and the cutoffs we use, are part of our proprietary model, so we don't publish them. We review the model regularly and adjust it as SBA lending changes.

What is the Local / Regional Lender?

Besides your top 3 lenders, we show one lender that focuses on your state, labeled Local / Regional Lender, when one qualifies. It has to have experience with businesses like yours. Lenders that lend across much of the country don't count as local, even if they're active in your state. If none qualifies, you'll see a note saying so.

What do my results show?

Your top 3 lenders, plus a Local / Regional Lender when one qualifies, each with plain-English reasons drawn from the data, such as how many loans like yours the lender has funded, how active it is in your state and whether its loans are close to the size you need. Every set of matches shows the date of the SBA data it's based on.

How do partner lenders and fees affect rankings?

Some lenders pay us, either a referral fee when a loan closes or a fee to advertise on our site. Every one of them is labeled Partner wherever it appears. Partner status and advertising fees never change the order of your matches. Rankings come only from SBA lending data. Any paid placement is labeled and shown separately from your ranked matches.

Lenders labeled "Partner" have a paid relationship with SBA Loan Connect: they may pay us a referral fee when a loan closes or a fee to advertise on our site. Our methodology page explains exactly how partner status is treated in rankings. How we rank lenders.

What are the limits of this data?

• It shows approvals, not declines. We can see which loans lenders made, not which they turned down.
• It doesn't record loan purpose. We infer it from other fields, for example changes of ownership for acquisitions and franchise codes for franchises.
• Past lending isn't a promise. Lenders change their appetite over time, and every lender makes its own credit decision.

Questions? Contact us.