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Lendistry

Lender or loan platform

PPP · PPPLF · Other programs
Type
Company or group
Role
Lender or loan platform
Programs
PPP, PPPLF, Other programs
Updated
  • Type: Minority-led, technology-enabled Community Development Financial Institution and SBA small-business lender — lender of record on its own PPP book; private administrator of state and federal relief grant programs.
  • Legal entities: B.S.D. Capital, Inc. dba Lendistry (the holding/operating entity; NMLS 1945565). Lendistry SBLC, LLC holds the SBA Small Business Lending Company license (one of fourteen nondepository SBA 7(a) slots in the country) and is an SBA Preferred Lender. Lendistry Core SPV II, LLC is a bankruptcy-remote SPV used for warehouse borrowing.
  • Founded: 2015, by Everett K. Sands.
  • HQ: Brea, California, with a Los Angeles office sited in an Opportunity Zone.
  • CEO: Everett K. Sands (continuous since founding).
  • Role: Direct lender (CDFI; CDE; FHLB-SF member; SBA Preferred; #2 nonbank SBA 7(a) lender) and government-relief administrator. Lendistry was the lender of record on its own PPP book and, separately, the private contracting party that California, New York, Pennsylvania, New York City, and the SBA hired to run pieces of pandemic relief.

In the archive

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: CDFI lender of record plus government-relief program administrator.
  • What Lendistry did for borrowers: originated PPP loans directly and helped small firms apply for state and local relief grants through public-program portals.
  • What Lendistry sold to governments: portal hosting, document collection, identity/bank validation, applicant support, eligibility workflow, and disbursement administration for grant programs in California, New York, Pennsylvania, New York City, and SBA-related relief.
  • Where responsibility sat: for PPP, Lendistry/B.S.D. Capital was the lender of record; for grant programs, the government agency owned program rules while Lendistry operated the private application and payment infrastructure.

Before the pandemic (2015 – early 2020)

Sands, a career banker (see his profile), started Lendistry in 2015 around a stated mission of lending to minority-, women-, veteran- and rural-owned small businesses (company site).

By early 2020 the company described itself as a certified CDFI and CDE, an SBA Community Advantage participant and a Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco member with a proprietary online origination platform (company site). It was a small SBA 7(a) participant by volume.

During the pandemic (March 2020 – mid 2021)

Paycheck Protection: 206,724 loans, most of them in one month

Lendistry made 206,724 Paycheck Protection Program loans worth $4.00 billion, and 198,770 of them were approved in May 2021.1 At an average of $19,333 a loan, the statutory fee schedule applied loan by loan puts its gross SBA processing fees at about $521.1 million. All but $8.6 million of that came from the 2021 vintage, after Congress rewrote the schedule so the smallest loans paid the lesser of $2,500 or 50% of the loan amount.2

MetricLendistry
PPP loans206,724
PPP dollars funded$4.00 billion
Estimated gross lender fees$521.1 million
Average loan size$19,333

It started small. Before the program, the home page asked borrowers for two years in business and a "FICO score of at least 680+."3 The PPP page that replaced it in April 2020 said "There is no minimum credit score," and listed no collateral and no personal guarantee.4 On April 23, 2020, Lendistry announced a financing facility from Goldman Sachs, part of the bank's 10,000 Small Businesses lending commitment, to fund PPP loans. It widened its service area to 12 states and said it had processed "approximately 2,000 PPP applications" in the first round at a median approved loan of $44,018.5 A June company post put Goldman's seed at $10 million.6 By June 30 the company said it had approved about twice as much in PPP loans in under three months as its total lending in the previous four and a half years.7 The SBA file records 3,517 Lendistry loans for all of 2020, worth $185.1 million; 54 of them are charged off in the September 2024 file.1

The same platform ran grant programs. Pennsylvania's $225 million program began taking applications through Lendistry on June 30, 2020, with grants of up to $50,000 for firms with 25 or fewer employees.7 California's first round drew more than 300,000 applications in a 15-day window, and the company's release said "the process is not first come, first served."8 In March 2021 Lendistry was selected to administer an additional $2.075 billion.9 By August 2021 the Los Angeles Business Journal put the California program at $4.23 billion and Lendistry's headcount at "just under 300 workers."10

Then the rule changed. The House Select Subcommittee dates the arrival of newer fintech lenders to "the change in the PPP fee structure" in early 2021.11 Lendistry's 2021 book was a different product from its 2020 one. In 2021, 201,750 of its 203,207 loans (99.3%) were for $50,000 or less and 191,277 (94.1%) went to sole proprietors, self-employed individuals and independent contractors; in 2020 the shares were 70.7% and 28.6%.1 May 2021 alone accounts for $3.66 billion, or 91.6% of its PPP dollars.1

Lendistry originated those loans; Harvest Small Business Finance is the servicing lender of record on 189,259 of them (91.6%).1 The Subcommittee credits Lendistry with "over $4.7 billion in PPP loans in 2021"; the SBA file shows $3.81 billion.111

The loan file records status, not cause. As of September 2024, 43,712 Lendistry loans (21.1%), carrying $834.9 million, were charged off.1 The rate is 22.7% on the loans Harvest services and 4.8% on the 17,465 that Lendistry SBLC, its SBA lending subsidiary, services.1 Lendistry also appears as servicer under a "Lendistry-Federal Reserve Contract" on 13,815 loans originated by Kabbage, of which 10,489 (75.9%) are charged off.1

No PPP borrower in the SBA file carries the Lendistry or B.S.D. Capital name, and California's WARN reports for July 2019 through June 2023 list no layoff notice from either.112 In May 2021 it announced new chief operations, financial, marketing and technology officers.13

The Fed's PPP facility: $590.2 million in advances

The PPPLF row for "PPPFL BSD CAPITAL" shows about $590.2 million of gross PPPLF advances and about $483.4 million of peak outstanding borrowings.14 Against $4.00 billion of originated PPP volume, Lendistry's PPPLF use was small relative to the book: well below Cross River, Harvest, Customers, Celtic or WebBank when scaled to their own originations.15

State and federal relief administration

Alongside its own loan book, governments hired Lendistry to administer relief grant programs (the following items are cited to program pages and press releases):

  • California. CalOSBA selected Lendistry by competitive bid as the intermediary for the California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program. The program grew to roughly $4 billion in grants of $5,000–$25,000 across multiple funding rounds; Lendistry hosted the portal, validated applications, requested documents and bank information, made the payments, sent notifications, and consulted with CalOSBA on selection priorities.1610
  • New York. Lendistry was the sole designated administrator of the $800 million New York State COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program, and separately ran $100 million in New York City COVID-19 Resilience Grants.1718
  • Pennsylvania. It administered roughly $280 million in state COVID-19 relief grants through the Pennsylvania CDFI Network.10
  • Federal. The SBA selected Lendistry as an exclusive community partner to help deploy the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund under the American Rescue Plan, specifically to reach restaurants without existing point-of-sale-vendor relationships and underserved owners.19

A June 2021 fraud email to Womply and Harvest

Lendistry was not on the Womply PPP Network public lender page in the archived capture.20 The House Select Subcommittee's December 1, 2022 fintech report quotes a June 8, 2021 email from Lendistry's CEO to Womply's Toby Scammell and Harvest co-founder Adam Seery flagging "a meaningful increase in the number of third-party and other inquiries related to fraud associated with applicants coming through Harvest."21

After the pandemic (mid 2021 – present)

The SBA lending license

In April 2022, Lendistry acquired a nondepository Small Business Lending Company license, creating Lendistry SBLC, LLC (GlobeNewswire and deBanked).22 Its later SBA Preferred Lender status and 7(a) rankings are company and SBA-report claims.2324

Financing after PPP

Post-PPP financing announcements (company releases and lender deal pages):

  • 2022: $85 million senior debt offering closed with roughly twenty-five banks, insurers, and ESG institutions. B.S.D. Capital's SEC Form D, filed November 4, 2022, reports $85,000,000 of debt sold to 25 investors, first sale October 20, 2022, with $1,700,000 in sales commissions.25
  • September 2022: Selected to deploy $200 million in New York State Seed Funding Grants.26
  • 2024: $5 million impact investment from City National Bank; launch of Lendistry Home Loans.
  • May 2025: Investment from Starbucks Community Resilience Fund.27
  • October 1, 2025: $75 million credit facility from East West Bank Specialty Finance Group, sized to support the SBA 7(a) program.28
  • November 18, 2025: $100 million senior secured revolving credit facility from KeyBank Specialty Finance Lending to Lendistry Core SPV II, LLC (with a $400 million accordion in company materials).29
  • An SBA securitization with an investment-grade rating; the launch of a Lendistry Insurance Fulfillment Team (2025); and a 2026 Visa & Main partnership in which Visa committed a $100 million working-capital facility, targeted at small businesses through Lendistry.30

Wildfire grant work, 2025

Early-2025 Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles County pulled Lendistry back into disaster-grant administration. Lendistry and The Center by Lendistry were selected by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation to administer a Small Business Disaster Recovery Fund and partnered with local agencies on the LA County Household Relief Grant Program, which launched in February 2025 with The Center by Lendistry as primary administrator and Lendistry providing the grant deployment platform.31

Onisko & Scholz — pending putative class action, allegations only

In November 2024, the Los Angeles accounting firm Onisko & Scholz LLP filed a putative class action (American Banker and CourtListener) (LASC No. 24STCV28081), alleging that Lendistry's administration of California state grant programs violated California data-privacy law: that Lendistry collected and shared applicants' sensitive data through partners Plaid and Qualified without consent, and that Onisko & Scholz received only a $5,000 grant when it was entitled to more. Lendistry "denies the allegations" and said it would "vigorously defend against these baseless claims." Plaid and Qualified are described in the conduct but were not named as defendants.32

The case was removed to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (No. 2:24-cv-10314); in June 2025 Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong granted plaintiffs' motion to remand the case to Los Angeles County Superior Court for lack of federal jurisdiction and denied Lendistry's motion to dismiss as moot. The court made no finding on the truth of the allegations.33

The New York State Comptroller's audit

In May 2025, the New York State Comptroller released an audit of Empire State Development's COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program, the $800 million program Lendistry was hired to administer. ESD, not Lendistry, was the audited agency. The audit found that ESD awarded about $4.1 million to 101 ineligible businesses, that a first-come, first-served award methodology left tens of thousands of businesses unfunded, and that rideshare drivers received about $184.5 million, nearly a quarter of the program's small-business funds.34

Where Lendistry doesn't appear

  • House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, December 1, 2022 fintech-PPP report: Lendistry is not a case-study subject. The Subcommittee names it primarily in connection with the Sands → Scammell/Seery fraud-pressure email; the report's case studies are Blueacorn, Womply, Kabbage, Bluevine, Cross River, and Customers Bank.21
  • SBA December 2022 lender-review list and suspensions: Lendistry is not on it (Womply and Blueacorn were suspended; Benworth, Capital Plus, Celtic, Customers, Cross River, Fountainhead, Harvest, and Prestamos were investigated but not suspended).35
  • DOJ criminal charges against Lendistry, Sands, or any Lendistry executive: none located.
  • False Claims Act settlements: none located.
  • SBA OIG enforcement findings against Lendistry: none located.
  • Bankruptcy proceedings: none. Lendistry remains operating, growing, and privately held.

Current posture (as of mid-2026)

A founder-led, Brea-headquartered CDFI lender with an SBA 7(a) franchise built after the pandemic; Sands is still CEO (company site). Its self-reported scale, rankings and financing partners are listed above as company claims.362430

Sources

Primary documents in this archive

  • SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data: Lendistry PPP loan counts, dollars, servicing lenders, loan status and the modeled fee total.
  • PPPLF advances and peak outstanding: ppplf_by_lender.csv, row "PPPFL BSD CAPITAL".
  • House Select Subcommittee June 8, 2021 fraud-pressure email (Lendistry CEO → Scammell/Seery): congress house select subcommittee fintech report womply kabbage bluevine sections 2022-12-01, ¶ 433.
  • Womply Fast Lane lender-list capture (Lendistry absent): womply ppp faq lender guides 2021-05-13.
  • Source note for the short article.

External references

Notes

  1. SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data, release through September 30, 2024, originating lender "BSD Capital, LLC dba Lendistry"; servicing lender from the same release. ↩
  2. SBA lender-fee schedule (5%, 3% and 1% by loan size; for 2021 loans of $50,000 or less, the lesser of 50% or $2,500) applied loan by loan to the SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data, release through September 30, 2024, current approval amounts. ↩
  3. Lendistry home page (March 21, 2020). ↩
  4. Lendistry, "SBA Paycheck Protection Program Loan" (April 21, 2020). ↩
  5. GlobeNewswire, "Lendistry Receives Capital From Goldman Sachs To Provide PPP Loans To Underserved Businesses, Doubles Footprint To 12 States" (Apr. 23, 2020). ↩
  6. Lendistry, "Lendistry Steps Up for Small Businesses in the COVID-19 Crisis" (June 2, 2020). ↩
  7. Lendistry, "Lendistry Selected as Administrator and Technology Partner for $225 Million Pennsylvania Small Business Grant Program" (June 30, 2020). ↩
  8. GlobeNewswire, "California's $500 Million Small Business and Nonprofit Grant Program Second Round Application Window is Open, Lendistry Announces" (February 2, 2021). ↩
  9. GlobeNewswire, "Lendistry to Administer Additional $2 Billion in California COVID-19 Relief Grants" (March 5, 2021). ↩
  10. Los Angeles Business Journal, "Lendistry Administers $1.5 Billion Small Business COVID Relief" (Aug. 6, 2021). ↩
  11. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, "We Are Not the Fraud Police" (Dec. 1, 2022), pp. 17, 51. ↩
  12. California EDD WARN reports: July 2019 to June 2020, July 2020 to June 2021, July 2021 to June 2022, July 2022 to June 2023. ↩
  13. Newswire, "Lendistry Adds Four Top Executive Trailblazers to Its Leadership Team" (May 13, 2021). ↩
  14. Project PPPLF table, row "PPPFL BSD CAPITAL." ↩
  15. BSD/Lendistry peak PPPLF $483.4 million against $4.00 billion of own PPP originations (project tables). ↩
  16. California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program FAQ and about pages. ↩
  17. PR Newswire, "Lendistry chosen to administer New York's $800 million Small Business Recovery Grant Program." ↩
  18. Empire State Development, Business Pandemic Recovery Initiative page. ↩
  19. PR Newswire and SBA press; Restaurant Revitalization Fund exclusive community partner announcement. ↩
  20. womply ppp faq lender guides 2021-05-13. ↩
  21. House Select Subcommittee fintech PPP report, Dec. 1, 2022, ¶ 433; archive path in Primary documents. ↩
  22. GlobeNewswire, Apr. 19, 2022; deBanked, Apr. 2022. ↩
  23. SBA Lender Reports; gosbaloans.com Lendistry SBLC profile. ↩
  24. Lendistry 2025 Impact site, https://lendistryimpact.com/ local copy. ↩
  25. B.S.D. Capital, Inc., SEC Form D (filed November 4, 2022). ↩
  26. Newswire, "Lendistry to Deploy $200 Million in Seed Grants to New York Small Businesses." ↩
  27. Lendistry press, May 2025. ↩
  28. Newswire, Oct. 1, 2025. ↩
  29. KeyBank deal page. ↩
  30. Visa newsroom press release, Feb. 2026; Lendistry Visa & Main page. ↩
  31. The Center by Lendistry 2026 Impact Report. ↩
  32. American Banker, Nov. 6, 2024. ↩
  33. Onisko and Scholz, LLP v. B.S.D. Capital, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-10314 (C.D. Cal.), Doc. 47 (remand order, June 2025). ↩
  34. New York State Comptroller, Report 2023-S-10, COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program (Empire State Development), issued May 7, 2025. ↩
  35. SBA Statement on House Select Subcommittee Report, Dec. 8, 2022. ↩
  36. Lendistry About page, Lendistry, About page founding 2015; CDFI; SBA #2 nonbank 7a; scale; current title; honors (original: lendistry.com · stored capture). ↩
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