Good Borrowers, Wrong Lenders. Ami Kassar Makes the Case for SBA Brokers

November 10, 2026
By Bob Coleman, Publisher

Here is what matters to SBA loan brokers this week.

Good Borrowers, Wrong Lenders. Ami Kassar Makes the Case for SBA Brokers

Ami Kassar, founder and CEO of MultiFunding, recently shared his reflections on LinkedIn following the NAGGL conference. Ami founded MultiFunding in 2010 and has spent more than 15 years helping small businesses find financing through a nationwide network of lenders. His post challenges a longstanding perception in SBA lending that brokers primarily bring lenders difficult credits. We are sharing his perspective with SBA Loan Broker Weekly readers.

Reflections from NAGGL: The Misunderstood Role of an SBA Loan Broker

Reprinted with permission from Ami Kassar, founder and CEO of MultiFunding. Originally published on LinkedIn.  

I came home from the NAGGL conference thinking about a perception in our industry that I have been trying to change for years.

When I meet people in the SBA lending world and they learn that I’m a broker, I can sometimes see the assumptions forming.

Brokers are where borrowers go when they can’t get a loan anywhere else. We bring the difficult credits, the complicated deals, and the borrowers who have already been turned down by multiple banks.

And to be fair, there are brokers who operate that way.

But that’s not how I see our role at MultiFunding. In fact, I see almost the opposite.

One of the biggest problems in SBA lending isn’t necessarily bad borrowers. It’s good borrowers starting at the wrong banks.

A perfectly good borrower can walk into a perfectly good bank and be a terrible fit for that bank’s particular credit appetite.

Maybe it’s the industry. Maybe it’s the collateral. Maybe it’s the structure of the acquisition, the borrower’s experience, or something else entirely.

That doesn’t make the borrower a bad credit. It just makes them a bad fit for that lender.

But the borrower doesn’t necessarily know that.

So they spend weeks, sometimes months, going through a process that was never likely to succeed. They get frustrated, lose confidence, and sometimes give up entirely, convinced that SBA lending is broken.

That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.

Last year, MultiFunding funded loans with 27 different lenders. That wasn’t an accident.

Every lender selection was intentional, based on our understanding of that lender’s credit box, preferences, and appetite. And once we make that match, we advocate for our borrower throughout the process.

We’re not just trying to find someone who will say yes. We’re trying to find the right lender for the right borrower from the beginning.

I believe that’s good for borrowers, who deserve a fair shot without wasting months at the wrong institution.

And it’s good for lenders, who should be spending their time evaluating opportunities that actually fit their lending strategies.

I have enormous respect for the SBA lending community. The people I met at NAGGL care deeply about helping small businesses access capital.

But I also believe our industry has an incomplete understanding of what a good broker actually does.

We shouldn’t be the place borrowers go only after everything else has failed. We should be one of the places they consider before they start.

One of these days, I hope to help break that stereotype.

Because when it’s done right, what we do isn’t about finding a home for bad credits.

It’s about making sure good borrowers don’t get lost on the way to finding the right lender.