Who actually makes SBA microloans: 139 nonprofits, and an Indiana lender on top

No bank makes an SBA microloan. Every one is originated by a nonprofit intermediary, usually a mission lender or certified CDFI, that borrows from the SBA and re-lends locally in amounts up to $50,000. In fiscal 2025, 139 intermediaries were active. Together they approved 4,599 microloans for $74.1 million, an average of about $16,000 per loan.

An Indiana lender tops three boards

The FY2025 dollar leader is Flagship Enterprise Center, an Anderson, Indiana nonprofit that lends as Bankable: 124 loans for $4.0 million. That is one of three boards it tops. Bankable also posted the program's largest dollar growth from FY2021 to FY2025, up $2.65 million (196.3 percent), and it leads the FY2026 year-to-date standings with $3.05 million on 82 loans.

Behind it, the models diverge. PeopleFund, a Texas CDFI, approved 71 loans for $2.85 million: fewer, larger credits. ECDC Enterprise Development Group in Virginia did $2.68 million on 81 loans. Accompany Capital, a New York lender built around refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs, approved 122 loans for $2.60 million, a $21,332 average. And the loan-count leader looks nothing like any of them: Ohio's Economic and Community Development Institute made 773 loans, the most in the country and roughly one in six microloans nationwide, for $2.33 million, an average near $3,000.

Concentrated? Not especially

The top ten intermediaries held 30.48 percent of FY2025 dollars, and the leader's share was 5.4 percent. By the standards of SBA lending, where a handful of national 7(a) lenders can dominate a state, this is a dispersed program. The long tail is structural: reaching borrowers at $16,000 a loan takes local institutions with local underwriting, not national scale. It also makes the economics hard, because originating and servicing a $16,000 loan is an operations problem before it is a capital problem, which is the gap CircumFi builds for.

A program getting smaller

The trend is the uncomfortable part. The chart below shows the full run: program dollars climbed from $69.4 million in FY2017 to a FY2023 peak of $86.7 million on 5,557 loans, then gave most of the gain back. FY2025 closed at $74.1 million on 4,599 loans: dollars down 14.5 percent and loan count down 17.2 percent in two years, while headline 7(a) lending set a record. We examined that divergence in our recovery analysis. The FY2026 file, still a partial year, shows 3,069 loans for $48.7 million so far.

Where the money goes

Accommodation and food services took the largest share of FY2025 dollars: 14.43 percent, or $10.8 million across 542 loans. Retail trade followed at 12.69 percent. Restaurants, food businesses, and shops are exactly the firms that need working capital in $10,000 to $50,000 increments, and this is the program that reaches them. The decade's quiet mover is health care and social assistance, up from 6.6 percent of program dollars in FY2017 to 10.1 percent in FY2025.

New York's outsized role

Twelve New York intermediaries were active in FY2025, approving 561 loans for $9.14 million. That is 12.33 percent of national microloan dollars from one state, on a bench that runs from Accompany Capital to Ascendus and Pursuit Community Finance. One honest limitation: the Lender Detail report is state-level only, so it cannot say where within New York these loans land. For a county-level view of one region's SBA activity, see our Hudson Valley county analysis.

About the data

Figures come from the SBA's Microloan Lender Detail reports, FY2017 through FY2026 year-to-date, retrieved August 8, 2026. We cross-check each year's lender-file total against the SBA's Microloan Segment Detail reports; the two reconcile to the cent in all ten years. One disclosed correction: SBA's files list one Alabama intermediary twice, as "Sabre Finance" and as "Sabre Finance DBA VentureSouth," with cent-identical figures in every year both appear; we merge the pair into a single intermediary, so our totals run below the raw file sums by that row's figures — for FY2025, 15 loans and $417,593.49. The industry-segment shares are quoted as SBA publishes them — raw basis, including the duplicated row, so the FY2025 segment sums exceed our deduplicated totals by exactly those 15 loans and $417,593.49. Growth comparisons use the FY2021 to FY2025 window, the same span as our other lender analyses. FY2026 figures are a partial year, standings only. Note the basis: our recovery article drew microloan totals from the SBA's Congressional District report, whose state-level series records FY2025 at 4,532 loans and $72.6 million; the deduplicated Lender Detail basis used here records 4,599 loans and $74.1 million. All numbers are approvals, not disbursements.