Methodology
How matching works
How Lender List sources lender criteria, labels certainty, and computes explainable deal matches — including fit, review, limited, and outside results.
Where the data comes from
Every lender profile combines up to three sources, each labeled distinctly: current lender-record criteria from the submission pipeline, lender-verified criteria a domain-verified administrator has attested to, and third-party reported information discovered from public industry directories and the Virginia SCC sales-based-financing registry. Discovered-only profiles are marked as such and are excluded from the working criteria directory.
What “sourced” means
A field is shown only when it comes from one of those sources. Blank fields are unavailable, never estimated or inferred to fill a table. Each criteria block carries per-field provenance — the source type, source URL, and the dates it was observed and last reviewed.
How a match is scored
The matcher compares the deal facts you enter against each lender’s known hard thresholds — minimum credit, time in business, monthly revenue, average daily balance, deposits, NSFs, maximum funding, position, ownership, and term — plus sourced state and industry restrictions. A threshold with no sourced value is not guessed; it is counted as unknown.
Fit, review, limited, and outside
A lender is “fit” only when enough thresholds are known and every known one passes. It is “outside” when any known threshold fails, “review” when a relevant threshold is unknown, and “limited” when too few criteria are on file to judge. The score reflects how completely the known criteria pass, and every result shows the exact pass, fail, and unknown counts and reasons.
Paper grades
A through D paper is informal industry shorthand for risk, not a universal standard. When a lender publishes no explicit grade, Lender List infers a range from sourced criteria and labels it as inferred. Grades route a conversation; they never represent an approval or quoted rate.
Independence
Claiming a page, supplying a logo, registering for the API, or responding to a review does not buy ranking or change organic placement. Independently sourced criteria are never silently overwritten by lender-submitted values; lender-provided buy-box data is shown with its own label and enters a review queue before it can affect matching. Any sponsored placement, if introduced, will be visibly labeled.
Freshness and corrections
Public discovery refreshes on a schedule and each record keeps its observation date. The API reports its data freshness and returns a degraded status when it is serving a saved cache instead of live criteria. Reader-submitted corrections are held for moderation and never change live criteria automatically.
What this is not
Matches, grades, and calculator outputs are informational estimates — not approvals, offers, commitments to fund, legal advice, or financial advice. Confirm current criteria, licensing, and terms directly with the lender before sending any merchant information.
Last reviewed Aug. 10, 2026 · Editorial policy · Corrections