SBA Data Availability Creates New Local Rankings

The Region’s Largest SBA Lenders
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In years past, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal was able to provide detailed information about where 504 and 7(a) U.S. Small Business Administration loans were made — specifically, how many loans were made in what city and how much was loaned in each city.

The 504 loans are long-term fixed-rate financing mechanisms for major fixed assets such as land and buildings, and 7(a) loans are provided by third-party lenders with an SBA guaranty on portions of the loan.

For instance, the Business Journal reported in February of 2004 that there were 119 SBA loans worth about $30 million made in the six-county area during fiscal 2003. Fayetteville had 26 of those loans worth $5.3 million, and Fort Smith had 15 loans worth $3.6 for the same period.

But Jim Coffey, public information officer with the SBA in Little Rock, said due to budgetary constraints the office is no longer able to report the data on a city-by-city basis. And, since most lenders don’t track which loans were SBA and which ones weren’t, it leaves a sea of generic statewide data to cull through and make Northwest Arkansas specific.

Statewide, there were 515 SBA loans made worth a combined $110 million by 75 different lenders in fiscal 2004.

To be fair to all lenders inside and outside the state, the list on page 29 is limited to lenders who had offices in the six-county area (Benton, Carroll, Crawford, Madison, Sebastian and Washington) during the SBA’s fiscal year 2004, which ended Sept. 30. All lenders who met that criteria and made at least one loan were included.

Unfortunately, this method doesn’t paint an accurate picture of SBA lending activity in Northwest Arkansas. The totals on the list have 19 lenders with 296 loans worth $69.5 million. That’s more than 50 percent of the statewide total, which is too heavily weighted.

Some companies are excluded from the list, while others appear to have loaned a great deal of money in the six-county region, when in fact their totals are for the entire state.

Excluded from the list were Virginia-based Capital One Federal Savings Bank, which made four Northwest Arkansas loans worth $160,000 in fiscal 2003; CIT Small Business Lending Corp. in Tulsa, which made five 2003 loans in the region worth $2.4 million; and probably other in-state lenders who made loans in the area but aren’t apparent through the data.

This year, CIT made eight loans worth $5.5 million in Arkansas. Terry Jones, regional account manager for CIT, said those were all in the northwest or western part of the state. Capital One made 51 statewide loans worth $2.1 million.

The method also doesn’t accurately represent the largest SBA lender in the state, Arkansas Capital Corp. Group, which has an active Fayetteville office. ACCG had 80 statewide loans worth $32.2 million.

Al Hodge, senior vice president at ACCG, was able to provide a breakdown of county-by-county numbers (see chart). The group had a total of 17 loans in the six-county region worth $7.1 million, or about 22 percent of its statewide totals.

First Financial Bank, which is No. 2 on the list, made 18 statewide SBA loans worth $10.5 million. The bank operates a Fayetteville agricultural loan production office. But the El Dorado-based bank’s SBA activity wasn’t all in the northwest, said Jerry Bullard, chief operating officer.

Bullard said he could run a query on the number of SBA loans generated out of the Fayetteville office, but that the numbers might include loans made in Oklahoma and Missouri, and then they wouldn’t jibe the number reported by the SBA.