Who Lends on Trades Business Acquisitions? The Top SBA Lenders
Live Oak Bank is the largest SBA lender for trades-business acquisitions by a wide margin: 581 loans and $705.0M from FY2020 through FY2025 — 13% of all such loans nationally, and twice the loan count of second-place Huntington National Bank (284 loans). The top 25 lenders wrote 46% of the loans and 49% of the dollars; the majority of deals were funded by a long tail of community and regional banks and credit unions.
| # | Lender | Loans | Dollars | Avg loan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Live Oak Banking Company | 581 | $705.0M | $1,213,340 |
| 2 | The Huntington National Bank | 284 | $223.2M | $785,849 |
| 3 | Celtic Bank Corporation | 104 | $119.3M | $1,146,925 |
| 4 | First Internet Bank of Indiana | 94 | $122.1M | $1,299,288 |
| 5 | Old National Bank | 89 | $93.8M | $1,054,274 |
| 6 | Byline Bank | 74 | $78.6M | $1,061,953 |
| 7 | Manufacturers and Traders Trust Co. (M&T) | 68 | $51.6M | $758,834 |
| 8 | BayFirst National Bank | 62 | $34.6M | $558,350 |
| 9 | Beacon Bank and Trust | 61 | $89.2M | $1,463,075 |
| 10 | First National Bank of Pennsylvania | 47 | $39.0M | $829,223 |
| 11 | The Bancorp Bank, N.A. | 45 | $35.8M | $796,498 |
| 12 | First Bank of the Lake | 43 | $91.9M | $2,136,314 |
| 13 | Customers Bank | 42 | $34.6M | $822,883 |
| 14 | U.S. Bank, N.A. | 42 | $24.9M | $593,938 |
| 15 | Zions Bank | 39 | $29.3M | $751,338 |
| 16 | Dogwood State Bank | 38 | $52.5M | $1,380,729 |
| 17 | Columbia Bank | 38 | $43.1M | $1,134,889 |
| 18 | BMO Bank, N.A. | 36 | $29.2M | $810,975 |
| 19 | BankVista | 30 | $19.7M | $656,140 |
| 20 | Pathward, N.A. | 30 | $52.1M | $1,737,780 |
| 21 | Truliant FCU | 30 | $50.6M | $1,687,290 |
| 22 | First Bank | 30 | $28.9M | $963,693 |
| 23 | Cadence Bank | 30 | $21.2M | $707,613 |
| 24 | Gulf Coast Bank and Trust Company | 29 | $38.3M | $1,322,131 |
| 25 | T Bank, N.A. | 28 | $48.1M | $1,717,796 |
FY2020–2025 approvals; 4,370 trades change-of-ownership loans nationally.
How to use this table
Match your deal size to the lender's book. Average loan per lender ranges from $558,350 (BayFirst) to $2,136,314 (First Bank of the Lake). Huntington runs a smaller-ticket, high-count franchise; Live Oak's book averages $1.21M; Pathward, Truliant, and T Bank average north of $1.68M on fewer, larger deals. A lender whose average check matches your deal size has underwritten your kind of transaction many times.
A specialist tier exists, but local still wins on volume. The top five lenders account for 26% of loans — meaning nearly three out of four SBA-financed trades acquisitions closed with a lender outside the top five, most of them community and regional institutions. If you are buying, the national SBA shops and your local bank are both live options; if you are selling, this table is the demand map — the institutions that have repeatedly financed buyers of businesses like yours.
Source and definitions: Lodestar Research analysis of the SBA 7(a) FOIA loan-level dataset (FY2020–2025 approvals; acquisitions = change-of-ownership loans in trades industry codes). Full definitions and limitations: methodology. Part of Who's Buying the Trades.
Cite as: Lodestar Research analysis of SBA 7(a) FOIA data, 2026.
Lodestar Research publishes market analysis for general information. Nothing on this page is a valuation of any specific business, legal, tax, or lending advice, an endorsement of any lender, or an offer to buy or sell securities.
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