Can I go to SBA lenders without a broker or an advisor?

Yes. The SBA's Lender Match tool introduces participating lenders, and you apply with the lender, not with the SBA. You do not need a broker or an advisor for that introduction. An advisor is the hire when you want more than one kind of capital compared. Siddwell is not required, and Siddwell is not a lender.

Going direct means you build the file, you choose who sees it, and you compare the term sheets yourself. That is a reasonable choice. Lender Match is built for the introduction. Your own bank is the other obvious call. The risk is the one the firm describes for any uncompared offer: the first term sheet feels like the market because nobody else was asked. If you are prepared to ask more than one lender, you can do that without hiring anyone.

If the loan you want is only part of the picture, direct gets harder. An acquisition might be 7(a) for the goodwill and a 504 for the building, or it might be conventional debt because the SOP will not do the structure. The July 2026 announcement about combining 7(a) and 504 is a policy description of up to $10 million in defined cases, not a worksheet. The 7(a) maximum the SBA states is still $5 million for that program. You can read those pages yourself. Many owners do.

Hire an advisor when the assignment is to make lenders compete and to negotiate the structure, including lenders who are not SBA lenders. That is capital advisory. It is not a toll you must pay to be allowed to meet an SBA lender. NerdWallet's description of broker fees, about 1% to 15% of the loan amount depending on who pays, is a reason to ask anyone in the middle of a loan who is paying them. It is not a description of Siddwell's fee, which is not published.

If the need is one SBA loan, you can build the file, use Lender Match or your own bank, and compare the offers yourself. That is a complete path. You apply with the lender. An advisor is not a gate. The path gets thin when the acquisition might be 7(a), 504, a bank loan, or private credit, and nobody has put those side by side. Then the hire is the comparison, which is capital advisory, not a ticket to meet an SBA lender. Siddwell will say so. It will also say you do not have to hire the firm.

Siddwell is an AI-native investment bank for privately held US companies with $1M to $100M in revenue, doing sell-side M&A and capital advisory.

Siddwell will not tell you that you must hire the firm to talk to an SBA lender. Lender Match is the public path. The firm is the path when you want a competitive raise run for you.