The Mercantile Record

Data and methods

Where the numbers come from, how we calculate them, what is wrong with the underlying data, and the tables to download.

Download the tables

You may quote, chart or republish these figures. Please credit The Mercantile Record and link to the page you took them from. The underlying loan records belong to the public.

What we use

SBA's 7(a) and 504 loan file. The U.S. Small Business Administration publishes a record for every loan it has guaranteed since fiscal year 1991, as a Freedom of Information Act release. It is posted on SBA's open data site and refreshed each quarter, usually about a month after the quarter ends. The version on this site is dated June 30, 2026.

The prime rate. Dates and levels of the bank prime loan rate come from the Federal Reserve's H.15 release, series PRIME on FRED. Prime has been 6.75% since December 11, 2025.

SBA's own rules. Fee schedules come from SBA's annual fee notice, and lending rules from its Standard Operating Procedure 50 10. We read the documents themselves and cite the version in force.

Method

Which loans. For current pricing we use 7(a) loans approved in the twelve months up to the date of the file. For outcomes we use loans approved in fiscal years 2010 through 2019, old enough for most of them to have been repaid or to have failed. SBA's fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30.

What we leave out. Loans marked cancelled, and loans approved but never paid out. Many cancelled loans were never used, so their terms tell us little.

Rates. The "initial interest rate" in the file is the rate at approval. Most 7(a) loans are variable, so this is a starting rate.

Spreads. A loan's spread is its initial rate minus the prime rate on the first business day of the month it was approved. SBA's rules set a loan's base rate on that day. When finding that day we skip weekends but not bank holidays. In the period we cover, no change in prime fell on a date where that shortcut would matter.

Typical values. "Typical" always means the median: half of loans are above it and half below. "Middle half" is the range from the 25th to the 75th percentile.

Rate caps. SBA limits the spread on variable-rate loans by loan size. A loan is counted "at the cap" when its spread equals the limit to within half a hundredth of a point.

State comparisons. States differ in the size of loans their businesses take, and size drives the rate. For each state we take the median spread in each of four loan-size groups and average them using the national share of loans in each group. Where a state has fewer than 15 loans in a group we use the national median for that group. States with fewer than 100 loans are not ranked.

Charge-offs. A loan counts as charged off if SBA's file gives it that status. "Within five years" counts the days from approval date to charge-off date. The share of dollars charged off divides SBA's "gross charge-off amount" by the gross amount approved.

Small groups. We do not report a lender with fewer than 100 loans, an industry with fewer than 1,500 loans in the outcome study, or a like-for-like lender rate based on fewer than 25 loans.

Privacy. The file names every borrower. We publish only totals for groups of loans, never a named borrower.

Known problems with the data

We found these while working with the file. They shape what we will and will not claim.

  • Active loans are a black box. A loan that has been paid out and is neither repaid, cancelled nor charged off carries a single status that SBA withholds detail on. Healthy loans and loans in default look the same. Charge-off rates for recent years are therefore floors.
  • The term field cannot be trusted for failed loans. For loans that are paid in full, the term is a round number such as 84, 120 or 300 months. For charged-off loans it is scattered across odd values, which shows the field was changed after approval. We do not analyze charge-offs by loan term.
  • The lender shown is the current holder. If a loan was sold or the lender merged, the file shows the lender it is assigned to now.
  • Industry codes are entered by lenders, and the national classification was revised in 2012, 2017 and 2022. We group by SBA's industry description so that renumbered codes stay together.
  • Some rates are wrong. A few loans show rates below 4% or above the legal maximum. They are too few to move a median, and we leave them in.
  • Approved is not applied. The file has no declined applications, no credit scores and no financial statements. It cannot say how hard a lender is to borrow from or why a borrower got the rate they did.

How often this is updated

When SBA posts a new quarterly file, we rerun every calculation and reread each article against the new numbers. Each article shows the date of the data it uses, and its change log records anything we altered.

Fee and rate pages change when SBA issues a new notice or the prime rate moves.

Corrections

If you think a number here is wrong, tell us. If you are right we will fix it, and the page's change log will say what changed and when.