Methodology
How we do our research
Where our numbers come from, how we handle figures we cannot verify, and what we do when we get something wrong.
Three tiers of number
- Program rules and published rates
- SBA maximum spreads, guaranty fees, occupancy requirements, debenture rates. These come from the SBA, the Federal Reserve, and other primary sources, and every one is cited on our rates page with the date it was verified.
- Market ranges
- What lenders commonly advertise for a given product. These are ranges, always labeled as ranges, never presented as an average or as a quote. They exist so you can tell whether an offer in front of you is normal.
- Practitioner norms
- The things underwriters do that are not written down anywhere: the DSCR thresholds, the credit floors, the fact that a blanket lien is negotiable. These are described as common practice, and we say so, because they vary by lender and they change.
Rules we hold ourselves to
- Every rate figure has a date. A rate without an as-of date is not information.
- Ranges are labeled as ranges. We do not convert a range into a single number to make a page read better.
- We do not invent averages. If we have not computed something from a real dataset, we do not present it as a statistic.
- Cost is stated in the terms that matter. For factor-rate products that means an annualized estimate alongside the factor, always.
- No product placement. Nothing appears in a list because someone paid for it. Today nothing could, because nobody pays us.
What we update, and when
Rate and program pages are updated when the underlying number changes — a prime rate move, a new fiscal year fee schedule, an SOP revision — not on a fixed content calendar. The review date at the top of each page reflects the last time a human checked it against source, not the last time a word was edited.
Where we are weakest
Being straightforward about this: non-SBA pricing is the softest data on this site. There is no public dataset of what online lenders and advance funders actually charge, because pricing is individually negotiated and rarely disclosed. Our ranges there are drawn from published rate cards and disclosed offers, and they are wide because the reality is wide. Treat them as orientation, not as a benchmark you should expect to hit.
Corrections policy
If we publish something wrong, we correct it and note what changed. Email hello@businesslendingbureau.com with the page and the issue.