SBA 7(a)/504 Loan, Lender & Franchise-Brand Default Intelligence
The SBA publishes every 7(a) loan it guarantees in a free FOIA file — lender, borrower, industry, franchise brand, dollars approved, and final outcome — but it ships as one unwieldy ~150MB CSV with no rollups and no scoring. LoanLens turns it into two scorecards people pay for: a lender benchmark with origination volume, average loan size, and default / charge-off rates plus a deterministic A–F grade, and a franchise-brand financeability score answering the question a prospective franchisee, franchisor, or franchise lender most wants — is this brand financeable and survivable? NAICS industry default benchmarks fall out of the same engine. Deterministic, Wilson-interval scoring, no LLM.
Coverage & headline figures
Built from a systematic 1-in-3 sample of the live SBA 7(a) FOIA file
(FY2020–present, source Last-Modified 2026-04-28).
Everything below is populated real data. The 504 program and
7(a) FY2010–2019 files use the same engine and join keys (v2
roadmap).
Of 124,439 sampled loans, 101,490 disbursed; 1.83% of disbursed loans charged off (1,856 loans) and 8,949 are in distress (default-rate numerator). 14,936 franchise loans (12.0% of all loans) span the 2,397 brands. Cleanest high-volume lenders: Bank of America (A, 1.14% default) and Live Oak (B, 4.04%); highest-default major originator: BayFirst (F, 19.74%). Riskiest sector: Transportation & Warehousing (15.49% default); safest large sector: Health Care & Social Assistance (6.13%).
Source (free, keyless, public-domain)
-
SBA 7(a) FOIA file
(
sba_7a_foia.csv, ~150MB, updated quarterly) → one row per guaranteed 7(a) loan: lender, borrower, NAICS, franchise code & brand, dollars approved/guaranteed, interest rate, term, loan status, charge-off date and amount, jobs supported. Host:data.sba.gov. Verified live and keyless 2026-06-30.
Cross-link: the loan record rolls up deterministically into three
scorecards by joining on normalized_lender,
normalized_franchise, and naics_code
— the rollups and scores no public file ships.
What’s in it — schema
Four tables. loans is the record table;
lenders, franchise_brands, and
naics_industry are deterministic rollups derived from
it. The franchise financeability score and lender grade are the
headline deliverables.
| Table | Grain (one row =) | Notable columns | Rows |
|---|---|---|---|
| loans | one 7(a) loan | lender_name, naics_code, franchise_name, gross_approval, status_class | 124,439 |
| lenders | one lender (normalized) | loans_count, approved_total, default_rate, charge_off_rate, lender_grade | 1,819 |
| franchise_brands | one franchise brand | loans_count, default_rate, survivability, financeability_score, risk_tier | 2,397 |
| naics_industry | one 6-digit NAICS industry | sector_name, loans_count, default_rate, charge_off_rate | 1,067 |
Columns in lenders (the benchmark)
Columns in franchise_brands (the flagship score)
Sample preview gated
A representative slice of scored franchise brands — the kind of financeability read this dataset produces. Loan count, dollars financed, and default rate are shown; the Wilson survivability lower bound, the 0–1 financeability score, and the risk tier — the proprietary, sellable composite — are redacted so the full score can’t be reconstructed. Seven of 2,397 brands; ordering does not reflect the financeability score.
| Franchise brand | SBA loans | $ financed | Default rate | Survivability (Wilson) | Financeability score | Risk tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subway | 130 | $42.3M | 10.68% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
| Ace Hardware | 105 | $91.8M | 5.15% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
| Motel 6 | 75 | $207.8M | 7.94% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
| Anytime Fitness | 97 | $53.1M | 5.56% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
| Servpro | 86 | $67.6M | 7.25% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
| Crumbl | 87 | $48.8M | 4.88% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
| The UPS Store | 327 | $120.0M | 3.05% | 0.••• | 0.••• | •••• |
Request the full live sample
Get a live, end-to-end sample of LoanLens — the
lenders benchmark with A–F grades and
survivability, the franchise_brands scorecard with the
0–1 financeability score and risk tier, the
naics_industry default benchmarks, and the loan-level
detail behind them — plus the Wilson-interval scoring
methodology.
No full dataset is downloadable from this page. Public-domain U.S. Government data (SBA 7(a) FOIA); not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Small Business Administration.