The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Dallas-Fort Worth District Office made $1.046 billion in loans to small businesses during the 2015 fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2014-Sep. 30, 2015), exceeding $1 billion in a fiscal year for the first time ever.
The D-FW district serves more than 900,000 small businesses across 72 counties.
Fiscal year 2015’s record lending put money in the hands of 1,982 entrepreneurs and small business owners to expand their businesses and create jobs – an increase of 18.7 percent in dollars and 18.3 percent in number of loans over the previous fiscal year.
Of the 166 lending institutions in the district, Wells Fargo was the top lender in dollars by providing more than $65.3 million in SBA loans. Compass Bank was the top lender in units by providing 307 loans to small businesses.
Tarrant County small businesses received 418 loans totaling about $180 million – an increase from 2014, when 339 small businesses received loans totaling about $170 million.
“We are still celebrating this tremendous success that the Dallas-Fort Worth market has achieved” said SBA’s South Central Regional Administrator Yolanda Garcia Olivarez. “This is something that speaks volumes to products the SBA provides and the great partners we have supporting our mission such as the North Texas Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders.”
In 2014, SBA loans totaled $881.1 million with 1,675 loans and in 2013, SBA loans totaled $813 million with 1,522 loans in the D-FW district.
“This is a huge achievement that not only helps the almost 2,000 small businesses served but it also helps our communities where those business are located by providing jobs and overall economic growth,” said Herbert Austin, district director for the SBA Dallas-Fort Worth office.
Nationally, 2015 performance results for SBA’s 7(a) program showed gains over 2014, with 63,000 loans totaling $23.6 billion – an increase of 22 percent in number of loans and 23 percent for total dollars.
The 504 program saw a slight decline in the number of loans, from 5,885 in 2014 to 5,787 in 2015, but the reduction was offset by a larger dollar amount in 2015 ($4.3 billion) compared with $4.2 billion in 2014.
Betty Dillard