Speed-first capital study shows traditional bank financing timelines have become economic liability for prime-rated small businesses
Cardiff, Inc. (Cardiff), a leading tech-enabled provider of financing for small and mid-sized businesses, released “The Economic Advantage of Speed-First Capital,” a comprehensive industry report analyzing the hidden costs of traditional lending timelines. The report, based on anonymized loan performance data from Q1-Q4 2025, reveals a fundamental shift in how American small businesses evaluate financing decisions.
Report challenges conventional lending wisdom
The study’s central finding challenges decades of conventional wisdom: for the Composite Organization modeled in the analysis, the Cost of Delay associated with traditional bank underwriting exceeded the Cost of Capital by a factor of 4.3x, resulting in a net positive ROI of 18% when opting for fintech execution speed over lower nominal interest rates.
“We’re witnessing a historic decoupling in the small business lending market,” said William Stern, Founder of Cardiff. “The value of capital is no longer defined solely by its cost; it is defined by its velocity. A low-rate loan that arrives after the opportunity has passed is not an asset; it is an irrelevant statistic.”
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The New Prime Migration
The report identifies what Cardiff terms “The New Prime Migration” — 78% of borrowers in the dataset had FICO scores of 700+ and revenue profiles that qualified them for traditional bank financing, yet opted for fintech execution speed. According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS), over 50% of domestic banks have tightened standards for Commercial and Industrial loans to small firms, creating what Cardiff describes as a “liquidity paradox” where creditworthy businesses face unprecedented delays.
Key findings from the report include:
- Traditional commercial bank financing averaged 45-60 days from application to funding, compared to Cardiff’s median time of under eight hours
- Businesses utilizing capital for “Protective Inventory Acquisition” — hedging against potential 2026 tariff impacts — realized risk-adjusted savings of 22% on material costs
- In multiple scenarios analyzed, businesses lost contracts, missed supplier discounts, or forfeited equipment purchases due to bank approval delays
- Cardiff’s automated underwriting engine, leveraging real-time financial data through Plaid integration, delivers decisions in under five minutes
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The report includes detailed customer journey mapping comparing traditional bank lending processes with Cardiff’s fintech approach, analyzing 45 distinct touchpoints from application through funding. Real-world case studies demonstrate how businesses used speed as a competitive advantage, from securing government contracts to bulk-purchasing inventory ahead of price increases.
“The data is unambiguous: for time-sensitive opportunities, waiting for approval is the most expensive thing a business owner can do,” said Dean Lyulkin, CEO of Cardiff. “We’ve built our technology stack to eliminate that friction without charging a premium for speed.”
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Source : Businesswire
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