The SBA just recently received the most active SBA banks for the past year, which we utilize to created our SBA Preferred List – 2023. The familiar suspects – Live Oak, Byline Bank, and U.S. Bank top the list in terms of loan volume. Live Oak Bank, was well ahead of second place Byline Bank in terms of loan volume. Live Oak achieved this goal with an average loan size of almost $1.4 million. Live Oak is more comfortable doing bigger loans than some of its banking peers as its SBA bank loans focus only on a dozen of so niches. When ranking loan activity by number of loans approved, Huntington Bank actually issued approximately three times as many loans as Live Oak even though Huntington’s footprint is limited to around a dozen stats.
The top 25 most active SBA lenders are below. If you are looking for a small business SBA loan for your business, there is no better place to look than than this table of the most active SBA banks for 7(a) loans:
| Rank | SBA Lender | Total Loan $$$ | # of Loans | Avg Loan | Avg Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Live Oak | $2,291,016,699 | 1,517 | $1,510,229 | 5.3% |
| 2 | Newtek Small Business Finance | $945,317,357 | 1,353 | $698,682 | 6.1% |
| 3 | The Huntington National Bank | $914,412,500 | 4,534 | $201,679 | 5.5% |
| 4 | Celtic Bank | $701,707,100 | 494 | $1,420,460 | 5.8% |
| 5 | Byline Bank | $623,952,600 | 491 | $1,270,779 | 5.9% |
| 6 | Readycap Lending, LLC | $578,732,700 | 489 | $1,183,502 | 5.4% |
| 7 | Wells Fargo | $565,409,200 | 1,928 | $293,262 | 7.4% |
| 8 | Harvest Small Business Finance | $450,384,800 | 382 | $1,179,018 | 5.6% |
| 9 | Enterprise Bank & Trust | $442,756,800 | 394 | $1,123,748 | 5.1% |
| 10 | U.S. Bank | $438,827,900 | 1,682 | $260,896 | 5.9% |
| 11 | KeyBank | $425,479,320 | 920 | $462,478 | 5.7% |
| 12 | MUFG Union Bank | $396,324,100 | 243 | $1,630,963 | 4.0% |
| 13 | Commonwealth Business Bank | $381,635,000 | 240 | $1,590,146 | 4.7% |
| 14 | TD Bank | $359,487,569 | 1,548 | $232,227 | 7.3% |
| 15 | Metro City Bank | $307,953,300 | 154 | $1,999,697 | 4.4% |
| 16 | Wallis Bank | $305,202,300 | 168 | $1,816,680 | 5.0% |
| 17 | United Midwest Savings Bank | $304,385,700 | 1,060 | $287,156 | 6.0% |
| 18 | Pinnacle Bank | $298,615,020 | 235 | $1,270,702 | 5.0% |
| 19 | PNC Bank | $296,910,000 | 629 | $472,035 | 6.7% |
| 20 | Bank of Hope | $294,203,000 | 288 | $1,021,538 | 4.9% |
| 21 | Bank of the West | $285,548,600 | 297 | $961,443 | 4.6% |
| 22 | Berkshire Bank | $284,237,400 | 276 | $1,029,846 | 5.7% |
| 23 | Bank of George | $273,089,900 | 118 | $2,314,321 | 5.2% |
| 24 | Peoples Bank | $263,703,150 | 266 | $991,365 | 5.4% |
| 25 | Open Bank | $262,704,800 | 139 | $1,889,963 | 4.7% |
- Our SBA preferred lender list 2023 ranking are based on 2021 loan activity.