The Small Business Administration has awarded its first small business lending company license under President Donald Trump’s second term.

The SBA in mid-June announced that Siemens Small Business Lending, which is an arm of the Munich-based Siemens Financial Services, is the latest recipient to nab a highly coveted SBLC license. While the SBA works with several thousand banks and credit unions throughout its lending network, SBLC licenses allow a select number of non-bank lenders–in this case, 16–to originate loans for the SBA’s 7(a) loan program.

Siemens Financial Services CEO Doug Maher said in a statement that the license will allow the lender “to help small businesses gain access to capital and adopt industrial AI and other advanced technologies.”

“For more than a decade, SFS has supported small and medium-sized businesses in scaling and expanding through automation and digitalization in factories, buildings, grids, and transportation systems,” Maher added. 

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In a LinkedIn post, Maher also celebrated Siemens being the first “industrial technology company” to snag an SBLC license. Such companies work to create technology that is used by those in industry, namely manufacturing, infrastructure, construction and so on.

Siemens is the latest non-bank lender to join the SBA lending network. For almost four decades, the agency capped the number of SBLC licenses at 14. But in 2023, the SBA lifted a 40-year moratorium that prevented it from bringing in new lenders to dole out capital within its flagship loan programs. 

That decision drew scrutiny from lawmakers in 2024, however, when the SBA awarded an SBLC license to Funding Circle, a United Kingdom-based lender that, at the time, was in the midst of selling its U.S. business. Lawmakers questioned the SBA’s decision, with some arguing that Funding Circle even had ties to China, which Funding Circle denied. Funding Circle ultimately surrendered its SBLC license after its U.S. arm was sold and it exited the American market.

As the SBA doles out a new SBLC license, it also shared that it guaranteed a record $45 billion worth of capital through its flagship loan programs, which benefitted around 85,000 small businesses. That record comes even as the agency has narrowed eligibility within its lending programs. In March, the SBA barred green card holders, in addition to any U.S. citizens living outside of the country, from accessing government-backed loans.

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