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Dan Gilbert

Executive

EIDL
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
EIDL
Updated

The profile

Founder and chairman of Rocket Companies. Two companies he controls sat under RER Solutions on SBA's COVID-EIDL loan-recommendation contract: Rocket Loans took about $233 million and Rockbridge-owned Rapid Finance about $148 million of the $738 million SBA had paid by February 2021. Neither company, and not Gilbert, has been charged.

In the archive

Identity and role

Dan Gilbert is the founder and chairman of Rocket Companies, Inc. (NYSE: RKT), the Detroit home-lending group that began as Rock Financial and grew up as Quicken Loans. He is Rocket's controlling shareholder and the founder of Rock Ventures. Its "Rock family of companies" includes the lender Rocket Loans, the small-business lender Rapid Finance through Rockbridge Growth Equity, the Detroit property company Bedrock and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Career

Wikipedia, a secondary source, records that Gilbert started Rock Financial in 1985 with his brother Gary; that Intuit bought it in 1999 and renamed it Quicken Loans; that Gilbert led a later buyback; and that the company went public as Rocket Companies in 2020 with Gilbert in control. Bloomberg's Billionaires Index carries a running estimate of his net worth.

Pandemic-relief role

Two Gilbert companies sat inside the COVID-EIDL processing stack, one tier apart.

Rocket Loans (RockLoans Marketplace LLC) signed a teaming agreement with Errin Green's RER Solutions on September 7, 2018. SBA awarded RER the disaster loan-recommendation contract that December, with a $100 million ceiling and Rocket Loans as subcontractor. SBA limited the competition to small businesses, and its Inspector General says RER "relied on Rocket to perform vital contract requirements." When COVID applications arrived in March 2020, SBA raised the ceiling without competition, to $600 million in April and $850 million in August, by the Inspector General's count. Rocket handled funding and disbursement of approved EIDL loans through SBA's E-Tran system.

Rapid Financial Services, run by Will Tumulty, was Rocket's own subcontractor. Rockbridge Growth Equity, which Gilbert co-founded with Brian Hermelin and Kevin Prokop, bought it in September 2013 (PR Newswire). Rapid's system scored the applications and returned approve, review or deny recommendations to SBA.

The House Select Subcommittee's June 2022 staff report divides the $738 million SBA had paid through February 2021: RER $357 million, Rocket Loans $233 million and Rapid $148 million. Rocket identified 20 employees on the work, Rapid 163 and RER six. Clyburn and Velázquez wrote to Rocket Loans and to Rapid on February 11, 2021, noting the two were expected to receive more than $360 million between them. The same report quotes the public filings of Rocket Loans' parent. Rocket Loans' revenue rose from less than $25 million in 2019 to more than $393 million in 2020. It then fell to $95 million in 2021, "mainly as a result of a reduction in revenues earned from processing economic injury disaster loans."

How the contract ended

USAspending.gov records $926.1 million paid across seven task orders under the RER contract, which ended March 17, 2024. The Inspector General listed $13,046,124.50 paid to the subcontractor tier above the 50 percent subcontracting limit as a questioned cost. It found that SBA had not checked whether RER's reliance on Rocket made the two companies affiliates under the ostensible-subcontractor rule, and concluded that "RER and Rocket Loans circumvented the subcontracting rule." All six recommendations went to SBA, and SBA answered that a formal size determination "is not appropriate at this point." By September 30, 2023 the Inspector General no longer listed the report as having open recommendations.

Their own relief

We found no PPP or EIDL loan to Dan Gilbert personally. The Rock companies were paid contractors in the relief programs, not borrowers.

Dan Gilbert has not been charged with a crime, and we found no enforcement action against Rocket Loans or Rapid Finance over the EIDL contract. The Inspector General's findings and the Subcommittee's are addressed to SBA and carry no penalty.

Since 2025

Gilbert remains chairman and controlling shareholder of Rocket Companies. Rocket completed its acquisition of Redfin in 2025 and closed its purchase of the mortgage servicer Mr. Cooper on October 1, 2025. Rapid Finance remains under Rockbridge ownership.

Documents on this site

Original source documents and archived copies

Sources

Notes

  1. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Idle on EIDL Fraud (June 14, 2022).
  2. SBA Office of Inspector General, Report 22-10 (Apr. 14, 2022).
  3. PR Newswire, "Detroit-based Rockbridge Growth Equity Acquires RapidAdvance" (Sept. 2013).
  4. Clyburn and Velázquez letter to Rapid Finance (Feb. 11, 2021).
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