Overseeing the 7(a) Loan Guarantee Program
Based on GAO’s prior work, SBA faces multiple challenges in overseeing and managing its largest financial assistance program—the 7(a) Loan Guarantee Program. GAO has found
- weaknesses in SBA’s oversight of lenders and has recommended that SBA develop policies and procedures for supervising and enforcing lenders’ compliance with program requirements and mitigating risk of loan defaults,
- the 7(a) program does not provide adequate information on the extent to which SBA is meetings its strategic goal of helping small businesses succeed, and
- SBA needs to better utilize loan performance data to measure program results.
^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done
SBA has made some progress in its oversight of the 7(a) program but continued attention will be needed to fully address all prior recommendations.
- Specifically, to better ensure that the 7(a) program is meeting its mission responsibility of helping small firms succeed through guaranteed loans, the SBA Administrator should complete and expand SBA’s current work on evaluating the program’s performance measures. As part of this effort, at a minimum SBA should further utilize the loan performance information it already collects to better report how small businesses fare after they participate in the 7(a) program.
Highlights of GAO-07-769 (PDF)
^ Back to topKey Reports
- Small Business Administration: New Service for Lender Oversight Reflects Some Best Practices, but Strategy for Use Lags Behind
- GAO-04-610, June 8, 2004
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 46 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Inspector General, Oversight of SBA Supervised Lenders, Report Number 8-12 (Washington, D.C.: May 9, 2008).
- SBA Inspector General Report 8-12 (PDF, 41 pages) (Note: This link goes to a publication on the SBA Web site.)
