SBA 7(a) Veterinary Clinic Feasibility Study

Veterinary 7(a): a lender-concentrated record

Veterinary practices took 2,941 SBA 7(a) loans and $3.21 billion from FY2017 to FY2026. Live Oak Banking Company alone holds 684 of them and $1.28 billion, far more than The Huntington National Bank with 172 loans and $103.9 million, Wells Fargo Bank National Association with 166 and $180.6 million, United Community Bank with 118 and $152.6 million, and PNC Bank, National Association with 107 and $159.3 million. No metric lies far from the 7(a) program as a whole; 7(a) is most of the class. The table lists present holders of the loans, not the institutions that approved them, and the largest holder is a single institution.

The median loan is $619,100, and the middle half runs wide, from $200,000 to $1.6 million. Franchise share is 0.99%. The study should also say how many veterinarians the practice employs and how the loan will be repaid if one of them leaves. Approvals slid from 470 in FY2017 to a low of 179 in FY2023, then recovered to 345 in FY2025, when dollars reached $434.2 million, the largest in the series; FY2026 had 231 loans and $272.9 million. California leads with 318 loans, Florida has 296, Texas 229, Ohio 125 and Pennsylvania 118.

A strong loss record

Veterinary credit has held up: a charge-off floor of 1.1% on the 1,496 veterinary loans funded in FY2017 to FY2021, and 0.40% inside five years. Cancellations fall in a narrow band, 11.7% to 12.3%. That record helps a borrower at the application, but a lender will still test whether the clients stay once the selling veterinarian leaves.

What a veterinary study must test

Nothing in the code limits this record, so the study can focus on the practice itself. It has to test demand from active clients and the households within the practice's drive time, and the corporate-owned and independent clinics competing for them; the purchase price against verified revenue and the seller's transition period; debt service coverage after veterinarian pay at market rates, since an owner-operator may be paying themselves too little; and, where the building is included, an appraisal that values it for another medical or service user.