Where the numbers come from

The sources

Every loan figure on this site is computed from the SBA's 7(a) FOIA file, the loan-level dataset the agency publishes on its open data portal. SBA refreshes it quarterly, about one month after each quarter closes. The cut currently on the site is dated June 30, 2026.

The Prime rate comes from the Federal Reserve's FRED service (series DPRIME, the bank prime loan rate) and is refreshed monthly. It feeds one rate file that the rates page and every calculator read from, so there is no drift between tools.

How the data is processed

A scripted pipeline does the work, the same way every cut. It downloads the new file, snapshots the raw CSV to our own storage permanently, and then validates it before computing anything: the row count must not shrink (the file is cumulative since FY2020), the required fields from SBA's data dictionary must be present, the change-of-ownership category must still exist with a plausible count, and interest rates must be populated on at least 99% of current-year rows. If any check fails, the pipeline stops loudly and publishes nothing.

When the checks pass, the pipeline computes the aggregates, writes them to the site's data files, and the site rebuilds. Every published figure carries its cohort, sample size, and as-of date, and the as-of date is read from the data file itself, never typed by hand. The site never queries an SBA server when you load a page; all figures are baked in at build time and regenerate automatically with each quarterly cut.

Definitions

• Change of ownership. A loan whose BusinessAge field in the federal file reads "Change of Ownership": the SBA's own marker for acquisition loans. This is the population most of the site is about.
• Charge-off. A loan the SBA has written off as a loss (LoanStatus CHGOFF in the file). Charge-off rates here are counts: loans charged off divided by loans approved in the cohort.
• Fiscal years. SBA fiscal years run October 1 through September 30. FY2026 began October 1, 2025.
• Median rate. The median InitialInterestRate, the rate at approval. Most 7(a) loans float over Prime, so this is the rate a cohort started at, not what its borrowers pay today.
• Deal-size buckets. Boundaries are upper inclusive: a loan of exactly $350,000 lands in the $150K to $350K bucket, not the one above it.

Lender metrics

The lender profile pages compute a few more figures from the same file. Their definitions:

• Initial rate. Every rate figure on a lender page (median, quartiles, recent median) is the InitialInterestRate, the rate at approval. The "middle half" range is the 25th to 75th percentile of that rate across the lender's window loans.
• Margin over Prime. For a variable-rate loan, the initial rate minus the Prime rate on its approval date (FRED series DPRIME, carried forward over weekends and holidays). A lender's figure is the median of those margins across its variable-rate window loans. Measured at approval, the spread stays comparable as Prime moves, unlike the raw rate.
• Collateral and secondary-market shares. The share of window loans whose CollateralInd or SoldSecMrktInd flag in the federal file is Y. These are reporting flags: they say a loan record reports collateral, or that its guaranteed portion was sold to secondary-market investors, nothing more.
• Recent window. The "recent median rate" covers the last two completed fiscal quarters in the current cut, computed from the cut's as-of date. For the June 30, 2026 cut that is January 1, 2026 through June 30, 2026.
• Minimum sample sizes. The recent median, the margin over Prime, and the approval-to-disbursement median are each shown only when at least 10 usable loans stand behind them; a franchise is listed only at 3 or more window loans. Sample sizes appear next to the figures they qualify.

Cohort discipline

Outcome figures, meaning charge-off rates, use loans approved FY2020 through FY2022. A loan approved last quarter has had no time to fail, so recent cohorts always look artificially safe; the FY2020-22 window gives every loan in it several years to mature. Volume and pricing figures use the recent window instead, FY2025 through FY2026 Q3, because there the question is what the market looks like now.

What to keep in mind

These figures are original computation from the federal file. No other publisher computes them, which means there is no second source to cross-check against. What we offer instead is a public raw source, the definitions above, and validation gates on every ingest.

FY2026 is partial: the current cut runs through Q3 (June 30), so anything labeled FY2026 covers three quarters, not four.

Lender comparisons need enough loans behind them to mean anything. The league tables rank by loan count, so thin-sample lenders do not surface, and lender outcome comparisons include only lenders above a minimum loan count in the cohort, currently 100 loans.

Corrections

When an error is found, by us or by a reader, we fix it and note the fix on the affected page. If a number here looks wrong, tell us and we will either correct the site or show our work.