Original research · from the federal loan record
Half of SBA loans are small. Ten lenders make most of them.
Nearly half of every SBA 7(a) loan approved in the last five years was under $150,000 — below the typical loan. Yet that small-loan market is remarkably concentrated: the ten busiest lenders wrote 61% of all of them, and several of the best-known SBA names barely touch a small deal. If you need a small loan, where you knock matters enormously.
The lenders who actually write small
most sub-$150k loans, last 5 years| Lender | Loans under $150k | Share of its lending | Practical minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Huntington National Bank | 16,260 | 59% | $18k |
| TD Bank, National Association | 9,485 | 81% | $15k |
| U.S. Bank, National Association | 8,098 | 78% | $10k |
| BayFirst National Bank | 7,071 | 90% | $50k |
| Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company | 6,226 | 83% | $10k |
| Wells Fargo Bank National Association | 5,007 | 72% | $10k |
| Readycap Lending, LLC | 4,514 | 56% | $20k |
| Northeast Bank | 4,229 | 72% | $25k |
| Newtek Bank, National Association | 3,191 | 44% | $40k |
| Celtic Bank Corporation | 3,049 | 70% | $50k |
| JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association | 2,866 | 46% | $20k |
| United Midwest Savings Bank National Association | 2,114 | 66% | $100k |
A few of these are household banks running enormous SBA Express programs; others are SBA specialists. What they share is a genuine appetite for small loans — and a practical minimum low enough to bother. Start here if your number is small.
How concentrated it is
share of all under-$150k loansTen lenders account for 61% of every small SBA loan in the country; fifty cover 85%. The other 550-plus lenders split what is left.
The big names that don’t do small
high-volume lenders, lowest small share| Lender | Small loans | Share small |
|---|---|---|
| Harvest Small Business Finance, LLC | 5 of 1,415 | 0.4% |
| Citizens Bank | 80 of 1,288 | 6.2% |
| Byline Bank | 157 of 1,651 | 9.5% |
| Live Oak Banking Company | 649 of 6,588 | 9.9% |
| First Internet Bank of Indiana | 156 of 1,421 | 11.0% |
| Bank of America, National Association | 588 of 3,081 | 19.1% |
These are large, active SBA lenders — but their business is bigger deals. Live Oak, the country’s largest SBA lender by dollars, makes a small loan under one time in ten. A $75,000 borrower who starts there is starting in the wrong place, however good the bank.
What this means if your loan is small
Small borrowers get turned away not because they are unbankable, but because a $75,000 loan earns a lender roughly the same fee-work as a $750,000 one. So most banks quietly steer small. The lenders in the first table above have decided the opposite — and the federal record proves it. Take your small deal to them first, and use the lender matcher to see which of them fund your industry and state.
How we know
so you can check itSource. SBA’s 7(a) FOIA release of 2026-06-30, US-government public domain. 226,939 funded 7(a) loans approved in the last five fiscal years. A “small loan” here is a gross approval under $150,000 — below the median 7(a) loan of about $179,000. Cancelled and never-funded approvals are excluded. Each lender’s spellings are merged as described in our methodology.
Reproducing this. The per-lender figures are in the downloadable CSV; the source file is public. Write to corrections@sbadecoded.com if you think we have it wrong.