Credit box

Definition

The band of deals a lender will actually write, whatever its site says.

Why It Matters

Every SBA lender works from the same program rules and almost none of them lend on the same deals, because the box is the bank's own overlay on top of the rules: a minimum size, a list of trades it will not touch, a view on goodwill, a floor on how long the seller has owned the business. None of it is published. This is why the practical move is more than one lender instead of a better application, and why an early decline is usually information about the bank and not about the deal.