Hudson Valley SBA lending in FY2025: 79 lenders, no dominant player

In fiscal 2025, SBA 7(a) lenders approved 956 loans totaling $354.3 million across the nine-county Hudson Valley, an average approval of $370,577. The more revealing number is 79: that is how many distinct lenders made at least one approval in the region, and none of them held even 11 percent of the dollars. This is a fragmented market, and the fragmentation has structure worth reading.

The dollar leaders and the volume leaders are different lists

Readycap Lending led the region by dollars: $37.7 million across 89 loans, about 10.6 percent of regional volume. Behind it came Live Oak Bank at $29.1 million, FinWise Bank at $23.7 million, Northeast Bank at $22.5 million, TD Bank at $20.5 million, and JPMorgan Chase at $13.1 million.

Rank the same market by loan count and the list rearranges. TD Bank made the most loans in the region, 136. M&T Bank made 121, Northeast Bank 104, Readycap 89. TD, fifth by dollars, is first by count. Live Oak, second by dollars, made just 18 loans.

Same program, different businesses

The reordering happens because these lenders are running different businesses through the same guarantee program. TD's 136 approvals averaged about $151,000: a small-ticket volume operation built on branch presence and standardized underwriting. M&T's average was near $70,000, smaller still. At the other end, Live Oak's 18 loans averaged about $1.62 million, which is project and acquisition finance, not volume lending. Northeast Bank sits between the poles, with 104 loans at a $216,000 average: volume operations at a mid-size ticket.

Read this way, the leaderboard is really three or four distinct markets sharing one program. A lender's true competitors are the ones in its ticket band, not the names adjacent to it in a dollar ranking.

The 7(a) program is also not the whole picture. The 504 program added 34 approvals and $44.3 million in CDC-side debentures in FY2025, delivered through three certified development companies, with participating banks providing roughly $53.7 million in companion third-party loans on those projects.

The trend under the totals

Demand in the region has been climbing. In New York's 18th congressional district, covering much of the mid-Hudson Valley, 7(a) approvals grew from 116 loans in FY2021 to 286 in FY2025, and approved dollars rose by $65.5 million, up 121 percent. One caveat belongs beside that figure: New York's congressional lines were redrawn in 2022 and again in 2024, so district-level trends are indicative rather than exact, while the county-level FY2025 figures above are solid. The regional totals also hide a county story, including a surprise at the top of the table; we break that down in a county-by-county companion piece.

What fragmented supply means for community lenders

A market with 79 active lenders and no dominant incumbent is a market where relationships are still winnable. No institution owns Hudson Valley small-business credit, and the growth is real. But the competition is segmented by ticket size, and the small-ticket band, where community lenders and CDFIs typically operate, is the band national volume players have already industrialized. Competing with a $151,000-average TD operation or a $70,000-average M&T operation is less a pricing problem than an operating-cost problem: what it costs to originate and service a small loan decides who can afford to make it. That cost-to-originate problem is the one CircumFi is building to solve for community lenders.

About the data

7(a) figures come from the county-level project data in the SBA's FY2025 7(a) lender activity report, as of September 30, 2025, filtered to nine Hudson Valley counties: Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester. The 504 figures come from the SBA's 504 CDC and third-party lender activity reports on the same county basis and date. The NY-18 growth figures come from the SBA's Approvals by Congressional District report. All numbers are approvals, not disbursements; some approved loans are later canceled or reduced. Lender counts are institutions with at least one approval in the region.