The 2026 Annual Report
State of SBA Lending2026
How to read this report
Inaugural edition. Five sections, same five next year. Chart B in Section 1 rotates to flag the anomaly of the year. 2026: the 43-day shutdown.
Read the Report
Lending Scorecard
FY2025 closed as the second-biggest 7(a) year on record at $37.22B. Then FY2026 opened with a 43-day federal shutdown and a 1,116-loan backlog burst on the day the lights came back on.
Lender League Table
Who actually wrote the checks. Combined, 7(a)-only, and 504 CDC league tables — with median spread, funding rate, and size mix for all 151 lenders that cleared the reporting floor.
Where the Money Flowed
Dollars by industry, geography, loan size, and loan purpose — and how those flows shifted after the 2022 NAICS reclass and the FY25 shutdown. Plus a deep-dive on the 990-deal acquisition-podcast cohort.
Cost of Capital
Same guarantee. Same borrower profile. 514 bps of spread dispersion across the top 100 lenders. Plus the Newtek flat-ceiling pattern: 6,683 variable-rate loans priced at exactly P+3.00%.
Borrower Playbook
1-in-5 SBA loans approved in FY2025 never closed. In FY2018 it was 1-in-10. The gap isn’t credit. It’s the lender. A playbook to land on the right side of the line.
Who Flips Your Loan
Six of the top-12 7(a) lenders never sell a loan. Four flip 98% of them. Which one wrote your deal sets what you pay. The league table doesn’t say.
How we counted
SBA public disclosure data. Denominators, windows, and filters labelled inline.