Small business lending

As budget questions loom over the most popular Small Business Administration loans, lenders have embraced the previously overshadowed 504 program after a key policy tweak.

Shares in the U.K.-based small-business lender fell 29% Tuesday after it sought to recalibrate expectations about its growth trajectory. So far, the company has pulled back lending more in the U.S. than in its other markets.

Breaking from its playbook as a conservative lender, Provident Financial in New Jersey is working with a fintech to offer unsecured loans online.

The Columbus, Ohio, bank has hired a former executive from Bank of America to run the new business, which will target physician, dentist and veterinary practices.

First Internet is poised to acquire an SBA lending team to help it meet an ambitious loan target for the year — a target the CEO plans on doubling in coming years.

Visa, Mastercard and PayPal are each putting up $10 million to back the cryptocurrency; company “gearing up” to reboot its flagging small business lending unit.

The online lending marketplace will use the equity financing from WestBridge Capital to diversify the digital products its offers banks trying to compete for small-business borrowers, its CEO says.

While Noah Bank’s CEO has been accused of self-dealing in connection with SBA loans, its chairman says the directors had a succession plan ready to go and are rallying to rescue the bank’s reputation.

The agency's spring rulemaking agenda includes the process for collecting small-business data as well as underwriting rules for GSE-backed loans. But what's missing from the list may be just as important.

In a state where laws are unusually favorable to high-cost business lenders, taxi drivers are not the only small-business people getting trapped in loans they can't afford to pay back. The question is, what are policymakers going to do about it?