What the July 2026 Survey Found
The Federal Reserve’s July 2026 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices, covering the second quarter of 2026, found that banks left lending standards for commercial and industrial loans to small firms “basically unchanged, on net.” Loan demand from small firms over the same period was reported the same way, basically unchanged rather than rising or falling. Responses were collected from 56 domestic banks by July 2, 2026.
This is the Fed’s own primary instrument for measuring exactly this question, whether banks are actively tightening or loosening the criteria they apply to business borrowers, and the July 2026 reading is a genuinely flat one on both sides of the transaction: banks are not pulling back credit, and small firms are not suddenly asking for more of it.
Neither Tightening Nor Loosening: What “Basically Unchanged” Means
“Basically unchanged, on net” is the survey’s own language for a net percentage of responding banks reporting tighter versus looser standards that falls into a narrow band, close enough to zero that the Fed itself does not characterize it as a meaningful move in either direction. It is a real, disclosed survey category, not a vague summary phrase.
That distinction matters for how the figure should be read: it is not the same claim as “credit is loosening” or “credit is tightening,” it is the Fed’s own way of saying the needle barely moved this quarter, which is itself useful information for anyone trying to gauge whether a credit squeeze is actively building.
The Year-Over-Year Read Is More Telling Than the Single Quarter
The more informative comparison in the July 2026 release is not the single quarter, it is the year-over-year read. Compared with the July 2025 survey, banks reported easier levels of lending standards across every loan category except consumer loans. That means the credit environment small businesses face in mid-2026 is measurably easier than it was a year earlier, even though the most recent single quarter alone reads as flat.
Put those two facts together and the trend line is gently easing rather than tightening: a flat latest quarter sitting on top of a full year of gradual easing tells a different story than a flat quarter following a year of tightening would.
Who Answers This Survey, and How Often
The SLOOS is conducted quarterly, timed to the Federal Reserve’s own FOMC meeting calendar, roughly January or February, April or May, August, and October or November each year. It separately reports on demand and standards across a range of loan categories, including commercial and industrial loans broken out specifically by firm size, which is what makes the small-firm cut used above possible in the first place.
Fifty-six domestic banks responded to the July 2026 survey. That is a real, disclosed sample size for a bank-side survey of this kind, not an anonymous or unspecified panel, and it is the same panel structure the Fed has used across the survey’s long publication history.
Why This Is the Supply Side of a Two-Sided Question
Everything reported here is the supply side of the small business credit question: what banks themselves are willing to lend, and on what terms. It says nothing directly about the demand side, how a merchant experiences trying to get funded, or about lending categories outside traditional bank commercial and industrial loans, MCA included.
A separate, demand-side survey, the NFIB’s own monthly Small Business Optimism Index, measures owner sentiment and credit-conditions expectations rather than bank-reported standards, giving a genuinely different vantage point on the same underlying credit environment.
What an MCA Broker Should Take From a Bank Survey
This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic. A bank-lending-standards survey does not measure MCA underwriting directly, MCA funders are not the banks responding to this survey. What it measures is the traditional credit environment a merchant is weighing an MCA offer against: if bank standards are easing, as the year-over-year comparison above suggests, a merchant has a marginally better shot at a bank product than a year ago, relevant context for how competitive an MCA offer needs to look.
A funder tightening its own credit box independently of this systemic trend is a distinct, funder-specific event, not something this survey measures directly, but the systemic backdrop it documents is the environment any individual funder’s own decision sits inside.
The Numbers
Bank lending standards for commercial and industrial loans to small firms were “basically unchanged, on net” in the second quarter of 2026, per 56 domestic banks surveyed by July 2, 2026.
Federal Reserve Board, The July 2026 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices
Loan demand from small firms was also “basically unchanged” in the same July 2026 survey.
Federal Reserve Board, The July 2026 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices
Compared with the July 2025 survey, banks reported easier standards for every loan category except consumer loans.
Federal Reserve Board, The July 2026 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices
The SLOOS is conducted quarterly, timed to the FOMC meeting calendar, and reports demand and standards by loan category including a small-firm cut of commercial and industrial lending.
Federal Reserve Board, Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey program page
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Federal Reserve Board, The July 2026 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices
- Federal Reserve Board, Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey program page