Every term the five documents lean on, defined in one ordinary sentence. Terms are also clickable wherever they appear in the plain-language summaries — tap one and the definition opens in place.
Search or browse by group. Each entry is one sentence you could read out loud to someone who has never seen a loan tape.
23 terms in plain language
The U.S. Small Business Administration — the federal agency that guarantees small-business loans made by banks.
The SBA does not usually lend money itself. It promises to repay part of a bank's loan if the borrower defaults, which makes banks willing to lend to businesses they would otherwise turn down.
Also written: Small Business Administration
The SBA's main loan program: a general-purpose business loan made by a bank and partly guaranteed by the government.
Used for working capital, equipment, buying a business or refinancing debt. Most loans in this data room are 7(a) loans.
Also written: 7(a), 7a
An SBA loan used to buy buildings or heavy equipment, funded jointly by a bank and a nonprofit development company.
504 loans are for fixed assets rather than day-to-day cash, so they are larger, longer and secured by real property.
Also written: 504
The share of a loan the government promises to repay to the lender if the borrower stops paying.
A 75% guaranty on a $1M loan means the lender is only exposed to $250,000 of its own money.
Also written: guarantee, guaranteed amount, guaranty rate
A loan the SBA signed off on. Counts and dollar totals here are approvals, not necessarily money that was ultimately drawn.
Also written: approvals, gross approvals, approved amount
The part of a loan a lender gave up on collecting and wrote off as a loss.
Charge-offs are the closest thing this data has to a realised loss, which is why they anchor the pricing work.
Also written: charged off, charge off, charge-offs
A borrower failing to keep up with payments, which puts the loan on the path to a charge-off.
Also written: defaults, default rate
Dollars charged off divided by dollars lent — how much of every dollar disappeared, expressed as a percentage.
Also written: loss rates, cumulative loss
One hundredth of a percentage point. 100 basis points equals 1%.
Also written: basis points, bps, bp
Anything that absorbs losses before investors do — a reserve, a guarantee, or a junior slice of the deal.
Money that takes the earliest losses so senior investors stay whole. Usually philanthropic or public capital.
Also written: first loss, first-loss capital
A Community Development Financial Institution — a certified lender whose mission is serving low-income and underserved markets.
Also written: Community Development Financial Institution, CDFIs
A Minority Depository Institution — a bank majority-owned by, or primarily serving, minority communities.
Also written: Minority Depository Institution, MDIs
A CDFI, MDI or similar institution that exists to lend in places mainstream banks underserve.
Also written: mission-driven lenders, mission lender, mission lenders
The lender that actually made the loan to the borrower.
Also written: originators, origination
The standard government code for what industry a business is in. The first two digits give the broad sector.
Also written: NAICS code, NAICS codes
A metro area as defined by the Census — a core city plus the counties economically tied to it.
Also written: metro area, metropolitan statistical area, MSAs
The numeric federal ID for a state or county, used to join data to maps.
Also written: FIPS
The year a loan was approved. Grouping loans by vintage lets you compare cohorts that lived through the same economy.
A 2007 vintage and a 2013 vintage behave very differently even with identical terms, because one met the financial crisis early in life.
Also written: vintages, vintage year
How much of the total sits in a few places, sectors or lenders. High concentration means a handful of names carry most of the dollars.
Also written: concentrated
The middle value: half of the loans are above it, half below. Less distorted by a few very large loans than an average.
The measured starting point. Everything the initiative later claims to have changed is measured against it.
The Freedom of Information Act — the law under which the SBA publishes the loan-level register behind these documents.
Also written: Freedom of Information Act