Three interactive data pages from official SBA reports: growth and year-to-date leaderboards for 7(a) lenders and 504 CDCs, FY2021 → FY2025 approvals for every congressional district, and ten years of Microloan intermediary trends with industry segments and a New York close-up.
A reference library for small-business lending.
Primary sources for lenders and CDFIs — the regulations, public datasets, national surveys, and research that describe how small-business credit works and where it falls short. Each entry notes its publisher, vintage, and any caveat worth knowing before you rely on it.
Topics
Sources
2026
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ECOA and Regulation B requirements for credit evaluation, adverse action, prohibited bases, discouragement, and small-business data.
The 2026 rule removed the effects test and states ECOA does not recognize disparate-impact liability; treat older disparate-impact material as historical.
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Examination procedures supervisors use to review ECOA compliance across policies, data, decisions, and controls.
Updated after the April 2026 Regulation B changes.
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Framework for Managing Machine Learning Models in Consumer Credit Underwriting(opens external site)
ResearchPractical model-risk-management framework for machine-learning underwriting: validation, monitoring, governance, and controls.
Consumer-credit oriented; adapt to a small-business context.
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Framework for using digital bank-account data to assess small-business stability, resilience, and growth.
Framework-oriented; later empirical work may refine the metrics.
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Financing demand, applications, approvals, lender types, satisfaction, and firm financial conditions.
Survey-based, not administrative loan-book data.
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Financing and financial conditions for businesses without employees, including sole proprietors and very small firms.
Survey-based.
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Demand, flexible underwriting, funding sources, technology, capital constraints, and expansion plans across 446 CDFIs.
Funding figures reflect sources selected among respondents' top three, not shares of dollars.
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Credit applications, denials, confidence, and alternative credit, with demographic cuts of reported outcomes.
Survey evidence about outcomes; not itself a legal finding of discrimination.
2025
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SBA loan-origination policies and procedures for the 7(a) and 504 programs, from eligibility through credit analysis.
Pair with later procedural notices that amend Version 8.
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Summary versus transaction-level cash-flow data, credit invisibles, underwriting benefits, explainability, and data-quality risks.
Research and policy analysis, not a binding rule.
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Empirical analysis of electronic cash-flow data in small-business underwriting, predictive accuracy, and credit access.
Based on participating-lender data; generalization should be tested on other populations.
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Examines the relationship between digital-payment data footprints and fintech credit access.
Specific market context; review the empirical setting before applying to U.S. small-business underwriting.
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Consumer & Community Context — small-business lender choices and approvals(opens external site)
ResearchCompares applications and approval rates across large banks, small banks, online lenders, finance companies, credit unions, and CDFIs.
Draws on 2023 lending experiences; supplement with the 2026 SBCS.
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Card market structure, pricing, below-prime consumers, merchant-category spending, disputes, and product trends.
Credit-card specific.
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How CDFIs and MDIs use electronic bank-account data and lending platforms to speed underwriting and reach underserved businesses.
Implementation-focused; not a controlled performance benchmark.
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Trend in the number and composition of certified CDFIs.
Brief rather than a full performance dataset.
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Compares recurring CDFI Survey findings on demand, funding, and operating conditions across survey cycles since 2019.
Survey-based and subject to sample changes.
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Year-end lender-level SBA approvals and dollars for fiscal year 2025.
SBA programs only.
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New credit applications, lending sources, and amounts requested and received by sex, race, ethnicity, minority, and veteran status.
Preliminary tables; final Census data will replace them.
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Fintech lending and loan performance among borrowers without conventional credit histories.
Specific lender and market setting; not necessarily small-business lending.
Evergreen references
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Regulation B subpart B requirements for collecting and reporting small-business credit application data.
Compliance begins Jan. 1, 2028 under the current rule; older dates are superseded.
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Consumer-authorized access to covered financial data, data interfaces, third-party collection and use rules, and aggregator obligations.
Compliance dates are stayed and the CFPB is reconsidering parts of the rule; track rather than treating dates as settled.
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Dashboard of card originations, inquiries, credit limits, geography, and credit-tightness indicators.
Product-specific; not a complete issuer ranking.
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Hub for certification snapshots, award-recipient performance data, research briefs, geographic eligibility files, and program evaluations.
Reporting vintages can lag; verify the latest ACR or data release for trends.
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Awardee, program, year, geography, and award amount across CDFI Fund programs.
Awards are not the same as total CDFI funding or balance-sheet capital.
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Treasury capital investments in CDFI and MDI depositories and the qualified and deep-impact lending that follows.
Depository CDFIs and MDIs only; excludes CDFI loan funds.
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Official list of mission-oriented, primarily nonprofit SBA lenders focused on underserved markets.
Check the list vintage on the page before relying on roster changes.
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Quarterly lending-growth and transaction reports for the Small Business Lending Fund.
Legacy program universe, not the full current lending market.
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SBA loan approvals by lender, state, and program.
Measures SBA-backed lending, not lenders' entire commercial portfolios.
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Current fiscal-year approvals by 7(a) lenders, 504 CDCs, and third-party lenders.
SBA programs only.
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Loan-level 7(a) and 504 history with a data dictionary, suited to lender, geography, industry, loan-size, and cohort analysis.
SBA-backed lending only; requires cleaning and vintage definitions.
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Official list of SBA-authorized non-depository lenders that can make 7(a) loans nationally.
SBLCs are only one segment of nonbank business lending.
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Institution-level bank financial and regulatory data with downloadable comparisons.
Bank-only; select the correct commercial and small-business Call Report fields.
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Bulk commercial-bank Call Report and UBPR files for reproducible bank-level screens at scale.
Requires field mapping, merger handling, and period normalization.
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Downloadable Call Report files for federally insured credit unions, covering commercial and member-business lending.
Use account-code definitions to identify business-loan measures.
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Section 1071 data intended to create broad public small-business lending transparency across covered lenders.
Public data are not yet available; current compliance begins Jan. 1, 2028.
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State Small Business Credit Initiative deployment, transaction data, private-capital leverage, and targeted-business reporting.
Program-funded transactions, not the entire market.
2024 & earlier
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Creditors using complex algorithms must still provide specific and accurate reasons for adverse action.
Technology-neutral requirement; read alongside current Regulation B.
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GAO study of fintech consumer and small-business lending, bank partnerships, alternative data, and fair-lending uncertainty.
Predates later guidance and the 2026 Regulation B changes.
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Interagency Statement on the Use of Alternative Data in Credit Underwriting(opens external site)
GuidanceRecognizes bank-record cash-flow data as alternative data, weighing access benefits against consumer-protection and model-risk controls.
Older but still useful; check current fair-lending law separately.
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The Use of Cash-Flow Data in Underwriting Credit: Empirical Research Findings(opens external site)
ResearchIndependent analysis of cash-flow variables and scores from six nonbank providers for predictiveness, inclusion, and fair-lending effects.
Older study; models and data predate the current market and 2026 Regulation B changes.
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The Use of Cash-Flow Data in Underwriting Credit: Small Business Spotlight(opens external site)
ResearchMaps the use of bank-account, accounting, and payment data across marketplace lenders, banks, and community development organizations.
Older market snapshot; pair with FinRegLab's 2025 work.
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Small-business fintech evidence on model miscalibration when economic conditions shift sharply.
COVID-shock, single-platform setting; supports stress testing and drift monitoring rather than direct generalization.
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Roughly 1,300 banks on underwriting, approvals, markets, competition, fintech, startups, and small-business lending operations.
Bank-focused; does not fully represent nonbanks or credit unions.
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Experiences and outcomes of small firms applying to online lenders.
Older than the 2026 SBCS; use together with current reports.
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Broad compilation of small-business finance conditions and capital-access evidence, with pointers to primary government datasets.
Periodic overview, not lender-level administrative data.
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CDFI Annual Certification and Data Collection Report — FY2023 Snapshot(opens external site)
ResearchCertified-CDFI institution types, primary business lines, financial products, and portfolio amounts.
FY2023 data; newer certification counts may appear in later Snap Stats.
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CDFI and MDI technology capacity, adoption barriers, and Treasury support, including a GAO survey of small lenders.
Focus is technology capacity, not underwriting performance.
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Year-end lender-level SBA approvals and dollars for fiscal year 2024.
SBA programs only.
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Bank-account ownership, nonbank financial services, mainstream and alternative credit, BNPL, demographics, and geography.
Biennial; 2023 is the latest published FDIC household survey.
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PPP evidence on automation, fintech lending, and racial differences in credit access.
PPP was an unusual zero-credit-risk program; do not generalize mechanically.
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Separates application behavior from approval disparities and compares bank and fintech application patterns.
PPP setting; empirical disparity evidence is distinct from current ECOA liability doctrine.
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Mortgage study comparing pricing and approval patterns for fintech and non-fintech lenders.
Mortgage-specific and based on older law and data.
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