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Chris Hurn

Executive

PPP
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

Founder and CEO of Fountainhead, a non-bank SBA lender that originated 272,227 PPP loans, largely through Womply's Fast Lane; Fountainhead sued Womply in Florida state court in 2021 over loan files and dismissed the suit with prejudice in 2022. Fountainhead's owners later voted to wind the company down.

Identity and role

Christopher Hurn founded and ran Fountainhead, a Lake Mary, Florida nonbank SBA lender and PPP lender of record. He is a commentator on small-business lending on Fox Business and other outlets, an author and podcaster, and has testified before Congress on SBA programs. Fountainhead has since wound down; Hurn now runs Phoenix Lender Services, an SBA and USDA lending operation under Community Bankshares.

Biography

Per Wikipedia (secondary), Hurn earned two bachelor's degrees from Loyola University Chicago, then a master's from the University of Pennsylvania's Fels program (associated with Wharton; the exact degree title is described inconsistently in his own materials). He briefly attended Georgetown's law school before leaving to pursue finance. He began in lending at GE Capital and Heller Financial, then in 2002 co-founded Mercantile Capital Corporation, an SBA 504 lender for owner-occupied commercial real estate that landed on the Inc. 500/5000 list. Old Florida National Bank acquired Mercantile in a deal that closed in October 2010, making it a subsidiary; Old Florida was later bought by IBERIABANK, and Hurn stayed on as CEO until he left in late 2014. In February 2015 he founded Fountainhead Commercial Capital.

The company and its PPP/EIDL role

Fountainhead operated through two related entities: Fountainhead Commercial Capital, the SBA 504 and conventional lender founded in 2015, and Fountainhead SBF, LLC, the affiliate that made SBA 7(a) loans nationwide and that did the PPP lending. In February 2019 Fountainhead bought one of the SBA's fourteen nonbank Small Business Lending Company (SBLC) 7(a) licenses, from American Business Lending, making it one of a small handful of nonbank 7(a) licensees and an SBA Preferred Lender.

Per SBA loan-level data, it originated 272,227 PPP loans worth $4.13 billion and collected about $0.64 billion in lender processing fees; the company's own mid-2021 figure was about $4.72 billion (deBanked), and ProPublica reported roughly 30,000 later-canceled Fountainhead loans. The volume came substantially through Womply: on February 23, 2021, Womply launched its "PPP Fast Lane" and named Fountainhead as a lending partner, routing applications from Womply's funnel to Fountainhead for origination.

"We did not shy away from the latest round of PPP," he said in June 2021, describing "long days and nights with little time to rest." He opposed letting fintechs into the regular 7(a) program, calling it "a bad idea that could negatively impact the integrity of SBA's loan programs" and warning that adding SBLC licensees without more SBA resources was "a recipe for disaster" (Banking Dive).

Their own relief

No PPP or EIDL loan to Hurn personally is established in the public record. (Fountainhead's role was as a lender of record.)

Hurn as commentator

Per Wikipedia (secondary), he testified before Congress on SBA programs in 2012 and wrote The Entrepreneur's Secret to Creating Wealth (2012).

The SBA (December 2022). The SBA's December 8, 2022 statement listed Fountainhead among the lenders it would investigate (with Benworth, Capital Plus, Celtic, Customers, Cross River, Harvest, and Prestamos); only Womply and Blueacorn were suspended. Hurn said Fountainhead would cooperate fully, adding the company had "always strived to conduct itself honorably." No public finding, penalty, or debarment against Fountainhead or Hurn followed.

Fountainhead v. Womply (loan files). The House subcommittee's December 2022 report quotes Fountainhead as saying it was forced to get "a temporary restraining order against [Womply], so they can't destroy these [PPP loan] documents", and Banking Dive repeated the quote. The state-court docket (Seminole County, Florida) shows that on August 27, 2021, Fountainhead SBF, LLC sued OTO Analytics, Inc. d/b/a Womply for equitable relief (specific performance and injunctive relief), Fountainhead SBF, LLC v. OTO Analytics, Inc. d/b/a Womply, No. 2021CA002143 (Fla. 18th Cir., Seminole Cty., Judge Susan Stacy), alleging Womply "presently controls access to certain of Fountainhead's Loan Files" and seeking turnover. On September 8 and 10, 2021, Fountainhead filed a Verified Petition, and then an Amended Verified Petition, for an Order to Show Cause for expedited temporary injunctive relief under Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.610, supported by an affidavit of Christopher G. Hurn dated September 7, 2021. Womply moved to compel arbitration. The court issued an Order to Show Cause setting a hearing, which on its face made "no determination as to the merits," then granted Womply's motion to seal portions of the record. The parties rescheduled the show-cause hearing, and Fountainhead voluntarily dismissed the case with prejudice on November 18, 2022. The docket shows no temporary restraining order or injunction entered.

DOJ borrower-fraud cases. No DOJ case names Fountainhead or Hurn as a defendant; where the lender appears in PPP criminal matters it is as the recipient of a false application (the Georgia example previously cited here is not in any source we have).

A proposed class action in the Central District of California alleged that Fountainhead favored larger, higher-fee PPP loans over earlier applicants. Those were allegations; in November 2021 U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson dismissed the case with prejudice (Law360; Shutts & Bowen release). No SBA OIG finding against Fountainhead or Hurn is documented.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Franchise Times (May 28, 2025) reported that when Hurn issued a capital call to pivot back to conventional SBA lending after PPP, his partners instead voted to wind the company down in early 2023. (A December 2021 agreement in principle for Crossroads Systems to acquire Fountainhead, subject to SBA consent, does not appear to have closed.) Hurn and much of his team joined Community Bankshares, where he was named president of the holding company and then president and CEO of a new subsidiary, Phoenix Lender Services. Phoenix began operations in January 2025 doing SBA 7(a), USDA, and 504 lending plus lender-service-provider outsourcing for other lenders, and it acquired the USDA loan packager Thomas Financial.

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

Sources

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