SBA 7(a) lending grew 19% in FY2025 — led by small-loan specialists

The SBA's Lender Detail reports for fiscal 2025 show a program growing on every axis at once. Approved 7(a) dollars rose 19.2% to $37.1 billion, up from $31.1 billion in FY2024. Loan approvals rose 11.0% to 77,954. And the lender base barely moved: 1,389 institutions approved at least one 7(a) loan, down just ten from the year before.

That last number rules out the easy narrative. Volume did not pool into a shrinking field, and it barely shifted toward the top: the ten largest lenders' share of approved dollars edged up from 34.7% to 35.5%, less than a point. The FY2025 story is not consolidation. It is who grew, and how differently they did it.

We computed ranked leaderboards directly from the official reports and published them as a living reference: SBA lender growth, FY2024 to FY2025. Every figure below comes from that data.

Northeast Bank led both boards

One lender tops the dollar board and the unit board at once. Northeast Bank added $1.02 billion in approved 7(a) dollars, growing from $289.0 million to $1.31 billion — more than four times its FY2024 book — while adding 5,248 loans, from 2,552 to 7,800 approvals. Its average approval was about $168,000, well below the program-wide $476,000 — a small-loan, high-volume model scaling at a rate few lenders attempt in one year.

Live Oak Banking Company, already among the program's largest lenders, was second in dollars, adding $868.7 million to reach $2.85 billion, up 43.8%. The Huntington National Bank was third at +$491.7 million — earned on 751 fewer loans than in FY2024, its average ticket climbing from roughly $234,000 to $319,000. Behind them: Port 51 Lending LLC, after reporting $78.8 million in FY2024, more than quadrupled to $353.9 million; mission-focused Lendistry SBLC more than doubled its dollars to $384.8 million (+$210.9 million) while adding 847 loans; and US Metro Bank added $203.0 million.

The unit board reshuffles the picture

Rank by loans instead of dollars and different machinery shows. After Northeast's +5,248, Newtek Bank added 1,009 loans even as its approved dollars slipped by $68.8 million. Manufacturers and Traders Trust (M&T) added 869; Lendistry, 847.

Neither view is the "real" ranking. Dollar growth tracks balance-sheet commitment and larger deals. Unit growth tracks how many businesses actually received credit. A lender adding thousands of loans under $200,000 runs very different origination and servicing operations than one adding the same dollars across a few hundred large credits. That is why the leaderboards give both views equal billing.

The 504 program grew in parallel: approved 504 dollars rose 17.1% to $7.80 billion across 6,762 loans, up 12.8%.

What it signals for community lenders

Average 7(a) loan size rose 7.4% to $476,000, but the lenders climbing these boards mostly did not get there by writing bigger loans. They got there on velocity and volume: standardized intake, fast underwriting cycles, and servicing that holds up at several times the prior year's throughput. Northeast Bank did not triple its loan count by tripling its staff. Handling small-loan volume economically is an operations-and-technology problem before it is a headcount problem, and that operating capacity is what CircumFi is building for.

The arithmetic still bites: when program dollars grow 19% in a year, a lender growing 0% lost share — and with the field flat at roughly 1,400 institutions, the gap now separates lenders whose operations compound from lenders standing still.

About the data

Figures come from the SBA's 7(a) and 504 Lender Detail reports for FY2024 and FY2025, retrieved August 7, 2026 via SBA's 7(a) & 504 open-data collection. All numbers are SBA-approved dollars and loan counts, not disbursements; some approved loans are later canceled, reduced, or never fully disbursed. The SBA fiscal year runs October 1 through September 30, so FY2025 covers October 2024 through September 2025. Totals reflect each institution's SBA program activity only. The full leaderboards add a combined 7(a)+504 view, FY2026 year-to-date standings (partial-year, same retrieval date), and FY2025 standings for 504 third-party lenders, with a searchable lender-level dataset behind them.