We’re in the same boat. $500k balance on our SBA backed loan at 11.5%. We started at 6.5% when we got the loan 5 years ago. After almost a year at this high rate we’re barely surviving as a business. Our bank said they can’t do anything for us. What do they care if we fail and default? The SBA will just pay them off. So I’m in the process of refinancing through a local credit union. They’re offering 7.5% which isn’t awesome but a hell of a lot better than where we’re at now and it’s a fixed rate. When we pay off the current loan at the current bank we can drop the SBA and their added 2% they tack on to every payment. Will be such a relief when it goes through. So I’d suggest trying a local credit union and seeing what they can do for you. I’m sorry you’re struggling too, best of luck to you!
Nope, ours is prime +2%, and that is standard with 7(a) loans. I was also under the assumption the SBA was supposed to help small businesses, until we signed our loan docs and saw their terms. We had to take the deal as that was our only option to secure financing at the time. We’ve had zero support from them since, don’t even have a contact there that I could reach out to with questions.
I will say, they did help when we were shut down during Covid. After we’d been forced to close for over 3 months they stepped in and made our loan payments for the next 6 months (it was part of the CARES act). It got us through that year but they are definitely making all that money back right now with this ridiculously high interest rate that just keeps creeping up. So, all these small businesses they “saved” during the shutdown are now struggling to survive (if they haven’t already gone under) and its nothing but crickets from the SBA about it.