What the Loan File Contains
The File
Every lender asks for roughly this list, one document at a time, over three weeks of email. The borrower who sends it complete on day one reads as organized before anyone opens the model. The Form 413, Form 1919, and seasoning entries cover the three items that surprise first-time buyers.
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The File, Piece by Piece
- Three years of the target's business tax returns, plus interim financials current within about 60 days
- Three years of your personal tax returns
- SBA Form 413, the personal financial statement, dated within 90 days of approval and reconciling with your bank statements
- SBA Form 1919, the borrower information form, answered completely the first time
- The signed LOI or purchase agreement, with price and structure the file's numbers match
- Proof of the equity injection with its seasoning: statements showing where the cash sits and has sat
- A business plan for the acquisition: what you are buying, what you will change, and who the customers are, which most lenders ask for on a change of ownership
- Projections with stated assumptions, built from verified earnings rather than the CIM
- A sources and uses table: what the deal costs all-in and who funds each piece
- A resume or one-page background making the case you can run this specific business
- Your acquisition entity's formation documents and EIN, once formed
- A term life application started early: the lender assigns the policy as collateral, full underwriting runs weeks rather than days, and many lenders will not fund without the assignment in hand
Lenders add their own forms on top of this set; ask for the full list in the first call, draft the plan in the Business Plan Worksheet, and cover the file with the Lender Package Cover template.
If the Answer Is No
Whatever the first lender says, take the same package to a second one with the terms request. A competing term sheet is leverage an SBA borrower can create, and most never do.
“The cash flow is tight”
Coverage came in under the lender's floor once your own salary and the real debt service were counted, so the business does not clear the ratio on the numbers as presented.
Restructure before repricing: a larger seller note on standby, more equity, or a longer term all move coverage. If none of them get there, the price is the problem.
Where that runs: Underwrite a Deal
“Not enough collateral”
The assets do not cover the loan. On its own this is a weak decline: SBA rules do not allow collateral shortfall as the sole reason to turn down a 7(a).
Ask what the real reason is, in writing. If collateral genuinely drove it, another lender may lend on the same facts; banks weigh it differently.
Where that runs: the reviewed lenders
“We don't do this industry”
Nothing about your deal: the bank's book is already full of that trade, or its own charge-off history in it is bad enough that the credit committee has stopped writing there.
Find a lender whose book already includes the trade. The federal file names which banks actually wrote acquisition loans in each industry, which is a shortlist rather than a guess.
Where that runs: Most Active SBA Lenders by Industry
“Management experience”
The underwriter could not connect your background to running this specific business, which is a judgement about the story on the page rather than about your resume.
Keep the seller on paper: a real transition-services agreement changes the underwrite. Then make the experience case in one page instead of a resume.
Where that runs: Management Case Worksheet
“Where is the injection coming from”
The equity you are putting in has to be yours and has to have sat still: a lender that cannot trace it, or that finds it arrived last week from a card or an unrecorded loan, stops there.
Show the money seasoned in your own account, and paper anything gifted or borrowed the way the lender expects. A seller note on full standby can carry part of the injection; cash that appeared on the way to closing cannot.
Where that runs: seasoning of funds
“Personal credit or the 1919”
Something on your credit report, or one of the character questions on SBA Form 1919, stopped the file before the business itself was ever underwritten.
Get specific about which item. Recent delinquencies can be explained in a letter the underwriter reads first; unresolved liens and judgments have to be cleared, not explained.
Where that runs: what the guarantee means
“It is over our SBA limit”
The 7(a) guaranty stops at $5 million, and a deal that needs more senior debt than that is a different product on a different desk, whatever the bank's SBA team can do.
Take the same file to a cash flow desk. Ten bank sponsor finance teams publish the EBITDA floor they lend from, and the lowest starts at half a million.
Where that runs: Lenders Past the Cap
Who to take it to next is the Lenders shelf, filtered to the desks that lend on a deal like yours.