Proprietary Data Report · August 2026
The ClearValue Lending SMB Financing Data Report 2026
What actually happens when a small business applies for financing — computed from ClearValue Lending's own legacy application platform: 23,347 applications, 10,887 businesses, and 2,408 lender submissions, February 2025 through July 2026. Nobody else has this dataset, so we're publishing exactly what it says, including what it doesn't support yet.
By ClearValue Lending · Vintage: Feb 2025–Jul 2026 (legacy platform) · Every figure below carries its own sample size (n) and source line
Headline Findings
About This Data
This report is computed from a one-time, offline restore of ClearValue Lending's legacy production database (23,347 applications, 10,887 businesses, 112,114 question-answers, 2,408 lender submissions, 433 decline reasons, 35 brokered offers). PII fields — Social Security numbers, dates of birth, street addresses, business names, tax IDs — were never queried by this pipeline. Every number on this page is a count, percentile, minimum, or maximum computed over a group, never an individual application or business.
The suppression rule: every published figure requires a group of at least 20 underlying records (n≥20). Groups smaller than that are folded into a single suppressed count — how many small groups existed and their combined size — rather than named individually.
Sample & bias: applicants on this platform self-selected into alternative/MCA-style financing, which correlates with weaker access to traditional bank credit. This is not a representative sample of the U.S. small business population — read these figures as how businesses that came looking for financing on this platform fared, not as a claim about SMBs generally.
Qualification-rate denominator: 21,873 of 23,347 applications (93.7%) were abandoned drafts that never reached underwriting. Every qualification-rate figure below uses only the 1,465 applications that were actually submitted and evaluated.
1. Qualification Rates
n=1,465 completed applications (1,210 qualified, 82.6% overall) · Feb 2025–Jul 2026
By Industry
| Industry | n | Qualified | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| (unspecified) | 165 | 153 | 92.7% |
| Trucking Services | 103 | 76 | 73.8% |
| Construction | 90 | 67 | 74.4% |
| Retail | 63 | 46 | 73.0% |
| Consultant | 54 | 42 | 77.8% |
| E-Commerce Business | 47 | 32 | 68.1% |
| Restaurants | 35 | 29 | 82.9% |
| Real Estate Brokerage | 34 | 25 | 73.5% |
| Adult Entertainment Industries | 29 | 17 | 58.6% |
| Cleaning Services | 28 | 19 | 67.9% |
| Doctor's Office | 25 | 18 | 72.0% |
| Accounting Firms/Tax Preparation | 22 | 18 | 81.8% |
| Wholesale | 20 | 12 | 60.0% |
| Software As A Service | 20 | 14 | 70.0% |
47 smaller industry groups (combined n=260) fell below the n≥20 publish threshold and are not broken out individually.
By Entity Type
| Entity Type | n | Qualified | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| LLC | 494 | 352 | 71.3% |
| (unspecified) | 247 | 212 | 85.8% |
| S-Corp | 143 | 109 | 76.2% |
| Sole-Proprietorship | 66 | 39 | 59.1% |
| C-Corp | 36 | 31 | 86.1% |
3 smaller entity-type groups (combined n=9) fell below the publish threshold.
By State
| State | n | Qualified | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| (unspecified) | 165 | 153 | 92.7% |
| CA | 135 | 100 | 74.1% |
| TX | 109 | 75 | 68.8% |
| FL | 98 | 75 | 76.5% |
| NY | 36 | 27 | 75.0% |
| GA | 33 | 18 | 54.5% |
| IL | 27 | 24 | 88.9% |
| WA | 27 | 18 | 66.7% |
| NJ | 26 | 21 | 80.8% |
| NC | 22 | 16 | 72.7% |
| VA | 21 | 13 | 61.9% |
37 smaller state groups (combined n=296) fell below the publish threshold.
2. Application Demand
Revenue, time-in-business, and credit-score bands are pre-bucketed at the source — the legacy intake form asked for a bracket, not an exact figure. A band where the end is lower than the start (e.g. "701-0") means "{start} or more" — the legacy form's encoding for an open-ended top bracket.
Applications Submitted, By Month
| Month | Submitted |
|---|---|
| 2025-02 | 202 |
| 2025-03 | 170 |
| 2025-04 | 88 |
| 2025-05 | 87 |
| 2025-06 | 55 |
| 2025-07 | 54 |
| 2025-08 | 63 |
| 2025-09 | 81 |
| 2025-10 | 57 |
| 2025-11 | 50 |
| 2025-12 | 37 |
| 2026-01 | 49 |
| 2026-02 | 52 |
| 2026-03 | 38 |
| 2026-04 | 28 |
| 2026-05 | 39 |
| 2026-06 | 37 |
July 2026 is excluded (a single partial month at export time, n=1, below threshold). Volume peaked at platform launch (Feb–Mar 2025) and settled into a lower, steadier monthly range from mid-2025 onward.
By Intended Use of Funds
| Use of Funds | Responses |
|---|---|
| Working Capital | 913 |
| Expansion | 559 |
| Equipment | 279 |
| Purchase Inventory | 235 |
| Repair or Maintenance | 187 |
| Other | 119 |
| Pay Off Business Debt | 101 |
| Marketing | 89 |
| Cash Flow / AR | 87 |
| Real Estate | 77 |
| Purchase Another Business | 59 |
| Payroll | 44 |
3 smaller categories (combined n=27) fell below the publish threshold.
By Monthly Gross Revenue Band
| Band | n |
|---|---|
| $0–$5,000/mo | 3159 |
| $5,000–$10,000/mo | 1882 |
| $10,000–$25,000/mo | 1797 |
| $0–$17,000/mo | 1439 |
| $25,000–$50,000/mo | 1051 |
| $50,000–$75,000/mo | 649 |
| $100,000–$250,000/mo | 640 |
| $25,000–$100,000/mo | 532 |
| $75,000–$100,000/mo | 400 |
| $17,000–$25,000/mo | 360 |
| $500,000–$1,000,000/mo | 172 |
| $500,000–$2,500,000/mo | 123 |
| $250,000/mo or more | 77 |
74 smaller bands (combined n=106) fell below the publish threshold — the legacy intake form changed its revenue bands more than once over the platform's lifetime, producing more distinct-but-overlapping bands than any other field in this dataset.
By Time in Business
| Band | n |
|---|---|
| 0–6 months | 2277 |
| 12–24 months | 1666 |
| 0–5 months | 1356 |
| 24–36 months | 1245 |
| 6–12 months | 1027 |
| 84–120 months | 981 |
| 36–48 months | 767 |
| 48–60 months | 666 |
| 60–84 months | 625 |
| 24–60 months | 602 |
| 120 months or more | 473 |
| 60–120 months | 349 |
| 120 months or more (alt. band) | 273 |
| 24 months or more (alt. band) | 117 |
No groups suppressed. Overlapping bands (e.g. two distinct "120 months or more" rows) reflect different versions of the legacy intake form used over time.
By Personal Credit Score Band
| Band | n |
|---|---|
| 700–749 | 2138 |
| 750–799 | 1801 |
| 650–699 | 1688 |
| 800–850 | 1341 |
| 600–649 | 1320 |
| 701 or more | 1165 |
| 601–700 | 927 |
| 550–599 | 615 |
| 500–549 | 582 |
| 0–499 | 414 |
| 500–600 | 399 |
No groups suppressed. As with time-in-business, overlapping bands reflect different legacy form versions over the platform's lifetime, not a data error.
Requested Amount Distribution
n=12,722 requested-amount entries. 10 entries above $5,000,000 or at/below $0 were excluded as data-entry errors (one entry requested $2.08 billion).
3. Decline Reasons & Lender Pipeline
The structured type taxonomy field only — free-text underwriter/lender notes are never published (they occasionally contain deal-specific or lender-relationship commentary).
Decline Reason Types (n=433)
| Reason | n | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Insufficient Revenue | 126 | 29.1% |
| Other | 94 | 21.7% |
| Underwriter Decline | 69 | 15.9% |
| Minimum Policy Requirement | 31 | 7.2% |
| Cash Flow | 23 | 5.3% |
10 smaller decline-type categories (combined n=90, 20.8%) fell below the publish threshold.
Lender Submission Status (n=2,408 submissions)
| Status | n |
|---|---|
| Lead | 1629 |
| Submitted | 457 |
| Rejected | 276 |
| Pending Offers | 29 |
3 smaller status groups (combined n=17) fell below the publish threshold. Across all 2,408 submissions, 11.46% were rejected at the lender-submission stage — after already clearing ClearValue Lending's own qualification engine.
4. MCA Pricing — From the Deals We Brokered
n=35 offers. This is pricing from the 35 merchant cash advance offers that reached the offer stage on this platform in this window — not a market or population statistic. Do not read these figures as "typical MCA rates."
| Metric | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy rate (factor) | 1.20 | 1.25 | 1.29 |
| Sell rate (factor) | 1.2575 | 1.30 | 1.3485 |
Offer status: 30 of 35 offers were status OFFERED; 1 smaller status group (n=5) fell below the publish threshold.
5. What We Don't Publish Yet
We have 19 confirmed fundings in this export (status FUNDED, funded 2025-02-11 through 2025-07-15) — real deals, real businesses. But 19 is below the n≥20 threshold we hold every published statistic on this page to. Publishing a median or quartile funded amount from 19 deals risks pointing back at one or two identifiable businesses, so we're not doing it.
Directionally, and strictly as anecdotal color — not a citable statistic — funded amounts in this export ranged from $1,000 to $100,000, and time from submission to funding ranged from 1.5 to 27.3 days.
We'll publish real funded-amount and time-to-funding statistics once confirmed-funded volume in our data clears 20.
Brian's Take
Educational commentary on what the numbers above mean — not financial advice, and not an offer of credit.
“The one number I'd tell any business owner to pay attention to isn't the overall 82.6% — it's that qualification rates ranged from under 60% to over 80% depending on industry. Construction and trucking, two of our biggest applicant pools, sit right in the middle. If you're in a lower-qualifying industry, that doesn't mean you can't get funded — it usually means the underwriting is leaning harder on your financials, not your industry code.”
— Brian Kim, Founder, ClearValue Lending
“Insufficient revenue being the top decline reason isn't surprising, but it's worth saying plainly: most declines in this data aren't about credit score. They're about whether the business's bank statements can support the payment. That's the number underwriters look at first.”
— Brian Kim, Founder, ClearValue Lending
“These 35 MCA deals aren't a market survey — they're what we actually brokered. A factor rate of 1.25–1.30 on an 8-month term is a real, sizable cost of capital. Anyone comparing an MCA quote against a bank loan APR is comparing two different things; we'd rather show the real numbers than round them into something friendlier.”
— Brian Kim, Founder, ClearValue Lending
“The $75,000 median request tells you these are working-capital-sized asks, not expansion capital. Most small businesses coming through here aren't trying to buy a building — they're trying to smooth out a cash-flow gap or take on a job they don't have the float for yet.”
— Brian Kim, Founder, ClearValue Lending
See Where Your Business Fits
82.6% of applicants who completed the process qualified. Find out what financing options fit your business.
Start Your ApplicationData Notes & Methodology
This report reflects a one-time analysis of ClearValue Lending's legacy application platform, restored from a database export dated 2026-08-03 and computed in an isolated, throwaway environment — the source dump never leaves local storage and is not committed to any repository. We'll refresh this report as new confirmed-funded volume and application data become available.
This report is the deep-dive statistical publication built from the dataset described on our data — see that page for the full application-funnel picture (started, contact captured, business profile completed, submitted) and its own limitations. Every product and page on ClearValue Lending is scored against our published methodology, the same standard this data pipeline follows: publish what the numbers say, disclose sample size and bias alongside every figure, and suppress anything a group of fewer than 20 records could re-identify.
Refresh cadence: this is a one-time snapshot of the legacy platform's historical data, not a live-updating feed. It will be refreshed on a cadence once ClearValue Lending's live application pipeline also feeds this dataset.
Source
ClearValue Lending analysis of its own legacy application-platform database (Applications, Businesses, Questions, LenderSubmissions, DeclineReasons, and Offers tables), export dated 2026-08-03, vintage Feb 2025–Jul 2026.
No figures on this page are extrapolated, modeled, or sourced from a third party — every number is a direct aggregate of ClearValue Lending's own platform data, with its exact sample size (n) stated alongside it.
https://clearvaluelending.com/reports/cvl-smb-financing-data-report-2026