COTTLEVILLE, Mo., Aug. 18, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lendesca, an AI-native originating lender service provider, today introduced itself publicly after months of originating loans with lending partners. The company gives financial institutions of every size access to a complete Small Business Administration (SBA) lending operation: the origination technology, the expert staff to run it, and the borrower volume to fill it.
The model departs from how lenders have historically added SBA capacity. Traditionally, lenders either built costly in-house teams with specialized SBA expertise or adopted point solutions that automated only part of the process. Lendesca operates the entire infrastructure, serves multiple institutions at once, and handles loans across the full-size range of the 7(a) program rather than concentrating on the small-dollar credits that are easiest to standardize.
“There is no shortage of technology pointed at SBA lending right now,” said Chris Hurn, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lendesca. “What has been missing is technology built by the people who have actually done the work. I have spent nearly three decades in this program, and so has most of our leadership team. We know where and how loan files thrive and also where and how they die. That is a different kind of knowledge than knowing where a workflow has a bottleneck — you can only build for it if you have lived it.”
Why SBA has resisted the fintech playbook
That distinction is the company’s central thesis. Over the past several years, a number of technology companies have entered SBA lending from the outside, building origination software without having operated inside the program. The pattern has been consistent. This type of software performs on standardized, small-dollar credits where the process can be reduced to a form, and it strains as loans grow more complex. Eligibility analysis, change-of-ownership structure, affiliation, collateral and lien positions, and guaranty documentation stop behaving like data fields and start requiring judgment that has to hold up under review years later.
Lendesca approached the problem from the opposite direction. The platform was specified and scoped by SBA operators and built alongside them, with underwriters and closers sitting next to the software engineers rather than filing tickets from another building. Document intelligence, automated file assembly, and agentic loan preparation handle the mechanical work, with connected context carrying what the file already knows from one stage to the next. Credit judgment stays with people, and the credit decision stays with the lender.
Prior to introducing the platform, Lendesca spent months processing real loans with lending partners, testing its approach against actual requirements. Today’s announcement reflects that track record, built on real outcomes rather than projections.
A bench built inside the program
The argument is not one a company can make without having done the work. Lendesca’s leadership team averages more than 25 years of SBA lending experience — originators, credit officers, closers, and operations leaders who’ve spent their careers inside the 7(a) program rather than studying it from outside. The bench includes some of the most recognized names in SBA lending, and several of its most vocal advocates for widening access to the program: Founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris Hurn, Founder and Chief Operating Officer Ryan Haider, Founder and Chief Growth Officer Matt Craig, Chief Revenue Officer Ray Drew, Chief Lending Officer Chris Hackney, Chief Credit Officer Michael Bland, and Executive Vice President of Operations Stephanie Thomas.
“Everyone on this team has spent a career arguing that this program should reach more borrowers than it does,” said Hurn. “Several of them have been making that argument publicly for years. What changed is that we can now build the thing that makes it true, rather than waiting for someone else to.”
The other half: institutional engineering
Lendesca’s technology organization is led by Chief Technology Officer Nick Payne, who has built lending and financial infrastructure for some of the largest institutions in the country, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Fannie Mae. It is an engineering pedigree the SBA industry has rarely had access to, and the pairing is one the company argues has been missing on both sides — technology firms without program expertise and program experts without engineering depth.
“I have built systems inside institutions where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in billions,” said Payne. “The SBA is a harder automation problem than most people assume, because the program is not a rules engine. It is judgment, documentation, and a standard you have to be able to defend long after the loan closes. The only way to build for that is with underwriters in the room, and with connected context across the entire loan file — what those experts know, present at every step instead of stranded in one of them. That is how this was built.”
How the model works
Lendesca operates as a lender’s SBA lending department. Engaged as a lender service provider and working within each institution’s credit policy and oversight, the company carries the entire lending lifecycle — borrower sourcing, packaging, underwriting, closing, secondary market execution, and servicing functions — across SBA 7(a), USDA Business & Industry, USDA Community Facilities, and commercial term loans. Because Lendesca generates its own borrower demand, partner institutions add SBA and other loan volume without standing up a business development team or a full SBA loan operations function, and without carrying the fixed cost of either. Credit authority, funding, the asset, and the customer relationship remain with the bank.
This announcement comes as participation in the 7(a) loan program continues to concentrate among a shrinking number of lenders. As institutions step back, the small business owners in those markets lose the local lending relationships that made the program work in the first place. Lendesca’s position is that most of those exits are not decisions about credit appetite. They are decisions about operating cost, and operating cost is a solvable problem.
“Lenders are not leaving the SBA because they stopped believing in it,” said Hurn. “They are leaving because running the department well is expensive, and running it badly has serious risks.”
About Lendesca
Lendesca is an originating lender service provider that extends the SBA lending capacity of financial institutions, delivering the full origination infrastructure and the borrower volume to run through it, alongside the teams lenders already have. Partner lenders retain credit authority and fund the loans they approve. The company’s leadership team averages more than 25 years of SBA lending experience and includes some of the industry’s most accomplished and widely recognized executives. Financial institutions interested in the model can learn more at www.lendesca.com.
Media Contact
Uproar by Moburst for Lendesca
lendesca@moburst.com
