You’re applying for an SBA loan. The conversation is going well, your business case is solid, and you have a great relationship with your lender. Then you review the Personal Financial Statement (PFS), and something shifts.
We sat down with Brandon Horvath, one of our SBA lenders here at First Financial Bank, to discuss why so many first-time borrowers freeze up at this moment, and why the instinct to hold back is almost always the wrong one. Brandon has been working with small business owners since 2014, and he sees this anxiety come up on the regular.
The reasons, he says, usually come down to two things. Privacy (“most people are not used to putting this type of information on one piece of paper”) and judgment (“the fear of being judged or ‘disqualified’ due to what their financial picture may look like”).
“Many borrowers think it’s a ‘gotcha’ document, when in reality it’s a context document. It helps tell the full financial story behind the borrower.”
That word “context” is doing all the work. The PFS isn’t a trap door. It’s the document where your story gets told. Read More >
