Looking for a small business loan? Data released this month by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) may help you in your money hunt. The data, which ranks lenders based on the dollar value of total loans outstanding, comes from a report released this month called Small Business Lending in the United States, 2013.
For small business loans (including credit card loans), the top five small business lenders as of June 2013, based on loans outstanding, were:
1. American Express Co.
2. First Citizen Bancshares
3. Wintrust Financial Corp.
4. Zions Bancorp
5. Synovus Financial Corp.
Bear in mind that these are far from the only lenders to small business. The data includes only lenders with domestic assets of $10 billion or more, which hold 48.9 percent of outstanding small business loans. Community banks often have higher loan approval rates than big banks.
The SBA culled the data from reports that depository lending institutions file with regulatory agencies in their states and takes into account four factors: the ratio of small business loans to total assets; the ratio of small business loans to total business loans; the total amount of small business lending by lender, and the total number of small business loans. The loans include those that are not SBA-guaranteed, including credit card loans.
The top five lenders of loans under $100,000, among banks with assets of $10 billion or more, were:
1. American Express Co.
2. GE Capital Retail Bank
3. Capital One Financial Corp.
4. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
5. Wintrust Financial Corp.
For loans of $100,000 to $1 million, the top five small-business lenders with assets of $10 billion or more were:
1. Synovus Financial Corp.
2. Zions Bancorporation
3. First Citizens Bancshares Inc.
4. Wintrust Financial Corp
5. TCF Financial Corp.
If you’re interested in state-specific data, the report also lists the top lenders for each state, starting on page 19.
As the report points out, the picture for small business lending isn’t rosy, though the economy is healing. Total small business loans outstanding increased only slightly, from $584.7 billion in June 2013 to $589.7 billion in June 2014.
Lending only began ticking upward in December 2013, owing to factors like caution among small firms about expansion, a slow recovery in real estate that lowered the value of properties used as collateral and lenders’ caution about extending more debt, the report found. Ninety percent of small business loans under $100,000 and 80% of those from $100,000 to $1 million were secured by collateral in 2013, according to research cited in the report.
Not surprisingly, lenders continued to favor larger loans, just like last year. For loans above $1 million, the total loans outstanding rose from $2,061.3 billion to $2,199.9 billion from June 2013 to June 2014. In contrast, in June 2014, there were $129.6 billion in commercial and industrial loans under $100,000, up from $124.1 billion in June 2013.
While the lending picture may be improving in 2014, lenders made fewer deals in 2013 than one year before, the report found. The total number of loans under $1 million that were outstanding dipped from 23.5 million in 2012 to 22.9 million in 2013. And the total number of lenders is declining, thanks to mergers and acquisitions The report found that there were 6,185 lenders filing required reports with regulators in June 2014, down from 6,403 the same time in 2013.
